Ethics Chapter 4: Nazi Records

Chapter 4: Nazi Records – The Origin and Use of Information

Excessive emphasis on the values of scientific objectivity can mask vital ethical issues

ORIGINATION, DISSEMINATION, AND USE OF INFORMATION

Nazi Past

“Undesirables” were sent to concentration camps for slave labor and death in an attempt to “purify” the Aryan race and so “scientific” experiments could be carried out on them

In ethical considerations, one must consider how information was obtained and how it will likely be used

Controversy in the Present

Medical specimens derived from concentration camps and Nazi experimental data should not be used, according to many people. Much of the scientific data was actually unscientific and fabricated anyways

Science must deter unethical studies by refusing to use research from them

Values in Nazi Medical “Science”

Nazi medical “research” included abandonment of the Hippocratic oath and abandonment of the patient’s health as the most important factor

Doctors presided over the killings to make the killings appear legitimate medical issues and useful research rather than mass killing

Diffusion of responsibility between all the levels of what was carried out helped participants justify their own complacency

Euthanasia was distorted by the Nazis to include the killing of those they deemed ‘not worthy of life’ without the patients’ own wishes discussed

‘special treatment’ was taken to mean medical killing as a new and necessary tool

Doctors who participated did so out of either psychopathic cruelty, personal aggrandizement, or to attempt to support Nazi theories

Nazi antiscience

Objectivization- treating people as objects rather than humans equivalent to the researcher

Nazi scientists’ objectivity basically meant abandoning and rejecting human values, not something normal science does

Nazi science was opposite to normal science in many ways- a predominance of Jews in traditional medicine and science led Nazis to use opposite measures, to use science as a means to justify their political views and “better” their pure race rather than yielding boring, traditional results that come from normal science

Research in the US

Nazi research can be treated the same as evidence obtained in violation of Miranda rights, it is inadmissible and treated as if it does not exist

Tuskegee syphilis experiment occurred due to white doctors’ views toward African-American patients

Kant’s categorical imperative applied to all beings capable of reasoning, therefore even if Nazis viewed Jews as ‘nonhuman’ the fact that they could reason meant they should be protected

NAZI TECHNICAL MEMORANDUM

Technical expediency and vague language mask what is really being discussed and the ethics behind it

People are referred to as “load”, “volume”, “cargo” to depersonalize it

“special vehicles” are vans used to murder people

One excuse given by a Nazi included that he thought the Jews killed weren’t really people

In Nazi Germany, means and ends became blurred, creating a cycle of self-justification where what could be done was done because it could be done

Hirt’s document about obtaining Jewish skulls was masked as furthering scientific knowledge but really furthered the mass killing of Jews

X-Ray paper follows all proper technical procedures but displays extreme emotional and ethical distance between the researcher and the subject, and it avoids concern for how the information was obtained and how it will be used

GRAPHICAL IMAGES

Social Darwinism was applied in Nazi Germany and used as justification for “purifying” the Aryan race

The goal of science was eugenics, to purify the Aryan gene pool

Politics and racism actually came before true science in their methods

Religion, faith, and culture were made to appear biologically determined

Charts allow technicians to remain detached from the values of the practice, they are just “following the charts”

Technology was used in determining whether someone was Jewish or not by measuring facial features, this made it impersonal and objective

ETHICAL APPRAISAL

Aristotelian ethics would condemn the actions of the Nazis but his praise of technical expedience might lend support for using data from Nazi studies for beneficial reasons today

Kantian ethics would condemn the Nazis also, “treat others as you want to be treated”, though the use of Nazi data depends on who you empathize with, victims or potentially benefitting people

Utilitarianism would say the great bad outweighed the unethical “good” of purifying the Aryan race, and that using Nazi data could only benefit people today if it is real data

Feminism and ethics of care would denounce the authoritarianism of the Nazis, they were uncaring and unethical in their treating of human beings as objects. Using the Nazi data would show care for the people who could benefit today