This book traces the history of the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial of 1946-47, through the eyes of the Austrian émigré psychiatrist Leo Alexander, whose investigations helped the US prosecution. Schmidt provides a detailed insight into the origins of human rights in medical science and into the changing role of international law, ethics and politics.
Autorentext
ULF SCHMIDT is a Senior Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Kent, UK. He was previously a Wellcome Trust Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, a Senior Associate Member of St. Antony's College and a Research Associate at the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine at the University of Oxford. He is the author of Medical Films, Ethics and Euthanasia in Nazi Germany (2002).
Zusammenfassung
In 1945, after the collapse of the Third Reich, Leo Alexander worked as an Allied investigator and exposed murderous medical experiments and other atrocities of the Nazi regime. His 'top secret' mission, meticulously documented in recently discovered diaries, provided the United States with shocking evidence to prosecute 20 German doctors and three administrators for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial held in 1946-47. The legacy of Nuremberg was profound. In the Nuremberg Code - a landmark in the history of modern medical ethics - the judges laid down for the first time international guidelines for permissible experiments on humans. One of those who helped to formulate this code was Alexander. Ulf Schmidt's discoveries reveal how modern medicine became the subject of greater accountability. He provides powerful insight into the origins of human rights in medical science and into the changing role of international law, ethics and politics. Schmidt argues that Justice at Nuremberg was replaced by a stream of medical suffering during the Cold War but also concludes that the legacy of Nuremberg is more relevant today than ever - that the protection of the lives, dignity and rights of humans is what really matters.
Inhalt
Prologue The Austrian Jew The Émigré The War Crimes Investigator The Road to Nuremberg Constructing the Doctors' Trial The Nuremberg Code Post-war Medical Ethics Bibliography Index