When Medicine Went Mad: Bioethics and the Holocaust (Contemporary Issues in Biomedicine, Ethics, and Society) (Hardcover)

~ Arthur L. Caplan (Author) "Nothing on this earth can prepare anyone for a place like Auschwitz-Birkenau..." (more)
Key Phrases: contemporary euthanasia movement, hypothermia data, hypothermia experiments, Nazi Germany, World War, The Humana Press Inc (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The Nazis performed monstrous biomedical experiments on concentration camp prisoners, compiling racial and other information while slowly killing them. Should the data from these experiments be banned, or mined for their possible potential benefit? This set of papers from a 1989 symposium at the University of Minnesota (where Caplan directs the Center for Biomedical Ethics) opens with the testimonies of camp survivors, who urge that the data be shredded. Another contributor argues that the data are scientifically worthless; others agonize over the issue and conclude that the Nazi data ought to be published. Of broader interest is an essay showing how the science of racial hygiene, which supported forced sterilization of undesirable racial groups, among other policies, took hold in Germany long before the Nazis came to power. One contributor compares Nazi euthanasia to the current practice of withdrawing life-support systems from patients whose continued treatment is not "costworthy." The closing paper thoughtfully looks at ethical dilemmas surrounding the Human Genome Project, an attempt to map human genes which, critics charge, could open the door to Nazi-like abuses.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Despite its fiery and garish title, When Medicine Went Mad is a sober and scholarly analysis of the Nazi physicians who--in the name of science--carried out unspeakable atrocities upon countless victims. Caplan, a national leader in bioethics, has assembled outstanding experts on the subject, including actual research subjects of this ghastly experimentation. Contributors include well-known bioethicists such as George Annas, Ronald Cranford, Benjamin Freedman, Jay Katz, Ruth Macklin, and Caplan himself. Personal testimonies by Eva Kor, Susan Vigorito, and Gisela Konopka are particularly meaningful, forming an ideal background for vexing questions about why these atrocities happened and how to insure that they never recur. Of particular value to researchers are the essays by Katz and Annas, who boldly confront the implications of Nazi medicine for today's research into the Human Genome and various other fields of study. Recommended for academic and medical school libraries.
- David A. Buehler, Charlton Memorial Hosp., Fall River, Mass.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 359 pages
• Publisher: Humana Press; 1 edition (July 17, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0896032353
• ISBN-13: 978-0896032354
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,036,695 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Necessary and disturbing read on use of Nazi data..., February 6, 2004

By	K. L Sadler (Freedom, Pa. USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Arthur Caplan, who is one of the U.S. major leaders in the bioethics movement, compiled this book demonstrating not only the real use of bioethics in determining the right and wrong of scientific endeavor, but also exposing the fact that in spite of all the knowledge the world has gained from the Nazi atrocities and other questionable experimental science, there are still those who would not only use the data from these sources...but would also excuse some of people who committed these horrors in the name of science.

It was to my surprise that I found this book, and later decided to buy it through Amazon. This book came about by researchers who were attempting to use and excuse the data obtained through one particularly horrific experiment done by the Nazis. There was concern that German aviators would suffer from exposure upon leaving aircraft that had been damaged in dogfights with planes from the Allies. This gave scientists the excuse to use political prisoners, captured soldiers, and Jewish prisoners as subjects in their experiments. They would dress the men as aviators would be dress and expose them to frigid water and lack of oxygen (as would be experienced by aviators at high altitudes). They would try varieties of means of re-warming these men, including absolutely ludicrous ideas that are revolting now in their simplicity and immorality...which I have no intention of discussing here. I don't know what is more amazing...that these men felt they were doing no wrong, or that some of our scientists would continue to advocate the use of the data obtained from these experiments. At least Mengele and the men behind his atrocious twins experiments had the presence of mind to know what they were doing would not be looked upon kindly. Not only did they destroy their work before the Allies could find it, but Mengele disappeared into the South American continent. The men who worked on these exposure experiments left around not only their very bad data, but pictures of themselves standing there as they slowly killed men by exposure.

In 1991, a conference was held to discuss the ethical use of such experiments. Should it be used? Why, or why not? Would use of this type of scientific information constitute an insult to the dead and living survivors of these experiments, or would putting that information gained to use make their unwilling cooperation in these experiments as not having been done in vain? Or did this type of experiment, and those done at Tuskagee, and those done at Willowbrook, merely continue to advocate the use of those considered inferior, or captive populations, by scientists as morally acceptable because the needs of `society' (as described by scientists and medical researchers) as more important than the needs of individuals? Sound familiar? It should...this question has never been morally answered and now, it is the corporations who put vulnerable populations at risk. Only their excuse is the bottom line, and profits.

Caplan collected a series of essays by those who were the victims of these and other experiments of the Nazi era. There is also input from those who would use this information in references, in their own work. There is input from bioethicists on both sides of the equation, and some input from notable American theologians. So it would seem this is an unbiased look into this question of when and who decides other human beings are of individual worth or are only of use to society as a whole. What is a bit perplexing to me is that the question needs to be asked, fifty years after the Holocaust, and thirty years after the explosive exposure of American experimental atrocities by Henry Beecher in 1966.

And yet it does...and yes we do need to teach these things to the new scientists and new medical researchers, and those who would do business by pushing the moral envelope just a bit farther in the name of profit. With genetics and politics combining to form a new type of eugenics, with stem cell research, the increasing need for organ transplants, emerging diseases, and allocation of limited health care...this book should be part of the required list of those in all these areas as well as in bioethics.

As theologian Neuhaus says in his chapter, "This meeting would be a failure if we were not made to feel uncomfortable." This book should make all of us feel uncomfortable. Maybe if we all were uncomfortable, the slippery slope to another medical and scientific "Holocaust" could be avoided.

Karen L. Sadler,
Science Education,
University of Pittsburgh