What prompted the need for a code of ethics for medical research? What did the Nazi doctors do that resulted in death sentences for them? How does the Nuremberg Code help protect human research subjects?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Nuremberg Code of Ethics is a set of principles for human experimentation. The ten-point code was created by a US-led tribunal that tried Nazi doctors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Learn about the Nuremberg Code and violations of it in 1963.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
In 1947, seven Nazi doctors were sentenced to death by a US-led tribunal for performing monstrous experiments on imprisoned Jews. Among other horrors, these doctors had sewn siblings together in an effort to create Siamese twins and dissected living people to study organ function.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The tribunal proposed an ethical code, composed of ten points, to govern human experimentation across the globe. Dubbed the Nuremberg Code, the document\u2019s first line mandates the \u201cvoluntary consent\u201d of any human subject.
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In 1963, Southam\u2019s ethically questionable practices finally came to light. He\u2019d partnered with Emanuel Mandel, the director of medicine at the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital in Brooklyn, NY, to inject 22 patients with HeLa cells, but three Jewish doctors, who knew about the \u201cresearch\u201d Nazi doctors had performed on their patients as well as the Nuremberg Code, refused.
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The problem was that the principles outlined in the Nuremberg Code weren\u2019t law<\/em>; in fact, at the time, <\/strong>there were no <\/em><\/strong>laws<\/strong> <\/em><\/strong>governing scientific research<\/strong>. For, although the notion of \u201cinformed consent\u201d had been present in the law since 1957, it only applied to medical procedures, not scientific research. So, over the objections of the doctors, the director of medicine ordered a resident to deliver the injections. The three doctors resigned and notified the press. Soon enough, the public outcry was vociferous enough to cause Southam\u2019s and Mandel\u2019s medical licenses to be suspended for a year. The NIH discovered that only a small portion of their grantee institutions had policies to protect research subjects, and a study in the New England Journal of Medicine <\/em>revealed that researchers had injected children with hepatitis and exposed anesthetized subjects to poisonous levels of carbon dioxide<\/strong>. In response, research institutions began to create and implement policies that protected subjects\u2019 fundamental rights. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What prompted the need for a code of ethics for medical research? What did the Nazi doctors do that resulted in death sentences for them? How does the Nuremberg Code help protect human research subjects? The Nuremberg Code of Ethics is a set of principles for human experimentation. The ten-point code was created by a US-led tribunal that tried Nazi doctors. Learn about the Nuremberg Code and violations of it in 1963.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":12078,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,39],"tags":[111],"class_list":["post-11997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ethics","category-history","tag-the-immortal-life-of-henrietta-lacks","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"\n
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Although the suspensions were stayed and Southam\u2019s and Mandel\u2019s punishment was downgraded to probation, the case made the public aware of researchers\u2019 practices. <\/p>\n\n\n\n