Talk

Human Experimentation

At the end of World War II, an International War Crimes Tribunal was set up to try the war criminals during the war. This tribunal was estabilished in the city of Nuremberg, the same city where Hitler announced his racial laws. One of the trials during the session of this tribunal was for the doctors who experimented on prisoners in the concentration camps. The outcome of the trial was the Nuremberg Code for Human Experimentation.

The salient points of the code are:

1. Voluntary consent is required for any experimentation.
2. Experiment must be to yield results that will result in the good of the society.
3. Animal experimentation must have already taken place.
4. Experiment must attempt to avoid all physcial mental suffering
5. Experiments should not be performed where there is a priori knowledge that death or disability will result (unless the experimenting physician is also a subject)
6. The degree of risk must never exceed the humanitarian importance of the results
7. Preparations must be made to prevent the possible disability or death of subject.
8. Experiment must only be conducted by people who have the scientific qualifications
9. The subject must possess the capability to bring the experiment to a close if the suffering is not bearable.
10. The scientist in charge must have control to terminate the experiment if there is any fear that death or disability might occur.