Suffering and the moral orientation of presence: lessons from Nazi medicine for the contemporary medical trainee

Medical trainees should learn from the actions of Nazi physicians to inform a more just contemporary practice by examining the subtle assumptions, or moral orientations, that led to such heinous actions. One important moral orientation that still informs contemporary medical practice is the moral orientation of elimination in response to suffering patients. We propose that the moral orientation of presence, described by theologian Stanley Hauerwas, provides a more fitting response to suffering patients, in spite of the significant barriers to enacting such a moral orientation for contemporary trainees.

USING FORBIDDEN RESEARCH METHODS AND TAKING BIOLOGICAL MATERIAL FROM PRISONERS OF CONCENTRATION CAMPS BY NAZI MEDICAL WORKERS DURING WORLD WAR II

The article analyzes the processes of illegal use of prohibited methods of research by Nazi physicians during their medical experiments on live people-prisoners of the concentration camps Auschwitz-Birkenau and Dachau during the Second World War. Medical experiments on living people, prisoners of concentration camps, as a rule, resulted in their death or caused severe and irreparable harm to health. These experiments supported by the idea of creating "pure race" were conducted by physicians of Nazi Germany in the death camps located throughout Europe. The leaders of the Nazi hierarchy developed the foundations of their fascist ideology, using the works of German sociologists (Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Hans Friedrich Carl Guenther, Walter Wuest) and geneticists (Eugen Fischer, Erwin Bauer and Fritz Lenz, etc.), many of whom came to the conclusion that the possibility of creating the necessary conditions in Nazi Germany for the purpose of improving the human race was closely linked to limiting reproduction of the "lower" peoples. The Nuremberg trial of Nazi criminals (1945-1946) identified serious crimes of Nazi physicians, who conducted medical experiments on people in concentration camps, and claimed them inhuman and breaking all international and human rights.

Dubious Premises—Evil Conclusions: Moral Reasoning at the Nuremberg Trials

Fifty years ago, 23 Nazi physicians were defendants before a military tribunal in Nuremberg, charged with crimes against humanity. During that trial, the world learned of their personal roles in human experimentation with political and military prisoners, mass eugenic sterilizations, state-ordered euthanasia of the “unfit,” and the program of genocide we now know as the Holocaust. These physicians, and their colleagues who did not stand trial, were universally condemned in the free world as ethical pariahs. The term “Nazi doctor” became the paradigm for total defection from the most rudimentary elements of medical morality. The caduceus literally became the instrument of the swastika.

Of Euphemisms and Euthanasia: The Language Games of the Nazi Doctors and Some Implications for the Modern Euthanasia Movement

Euphemisms are place-holders for important concepts. They may disguise a practice which one might abhor if it were given another name. In Nazi Germany during World War II, euphemisms were used to desensitize physicians and society to the horrors of a program of euthanasia. This article examines some of the euphemisms used by the Nazi physicians to redefine medicalized killing, compares the Nazi language games with those of contemporary proponents of medicalized killing, and concludes that the consistent application of euphemisms for medicalized killing significantly weakens arguments against assisted killing. We should watch the way we talk. Human society can be described as a long conversation about what matters. In this conversation, the language we use to describe our social practices not only reveals our attitudes and virtues, it shapes them (Winslow, 1994, p. 1).