The trial of the "German doctors" exposed atrocities of Nazi medical science and led to the Nuremberg Code governing human experimentation. In Japan, Unit 731 carried out hideous experiments on captured Chinese and downed American pilots. In the United States, stories linger of biological experimentation during the Korean War. This collection of essays looks at the dark medical research conducted during and after World War II. Contributors describe this research, how it was brought to light, and the rationalizations of those who perpetrated and benefited from it; look at the response to the revelations of this horrific research and its implications for present-day medicine and ethics; and offer lessons about human experimentation in an age of human embryo research and genetic engineering.
William R. LaFleur is the E. Dale Saunders Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Liquid Life: Abortion and Buddhism in Japan.Gernot Böhme recently retired as Professor of Philosophy at the Technical University of Darmstadt. His books in English include Coping with Science and Ethics in Context: The Art of Dealing with Serious Questions.Susumu Shimazono is Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Tokyo and serves on the Japanese Prime Minister's Advisory Panel on Bioethics.
Table of Contents
PrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Knowledge Tree and Its Double FruitWilliam R. LaFleurPart 1. The Gruesome Past and Lessons Not Yet Learned1. Rationalizing Unethical Medical Research: Taking Seriously the Case of Viktor von WeizsäckerGernot Böhme2. Medical Research, Morality, and History: The German Journal Ethik and the Limits of Human ExperimentationAndreas Frewer3. Experimentation on Humans and Informed Consent: How We Arrived Where We AreRolf Winau4. The Silence of the ScholarsBenno Müller-Hill5. The Ethics of Evil: The Challenge and the Lessons of Nazi Medical ExperimentsArthur L. Caplan6. Unit 731 and the Human Skulls Discovered in 1989: Physicians Carrying Out Organized CrimesKei-ichi Tsuneishi7. Biohazard: Unit 731 in Postwar Japanese Politics of National "Forgetfulness"Frederick R. Dickinson8. Biological Weapons: The United States and the Korean WarG. Cameron Hurst III9. Experimental Injury: Wound Ballistics and Aviation Medicine in Mid-century AmericaSusan Lindee10. Stumbling Toward Bioethics: Human Experiments Policy and the Early Cold WarJonathan D. MorenoPart 2. The Conflicted Present and the Worrisome Future11. Toward an Ethics of IatrogenesisRenée C. Fox12. Strategies for Survival versus Accepting Impermanence: Rationalizing Brain Death and Organ Transplantation TodayTetsuo Yamaori13. The Age of a "Revolutionized Human Body" and the Right to DieYoshihiko Komatsu14. Why We Must Be Prudent in Research Using Human Embryos: Differing Views of Human DignitySusumu Shimazono15. Eugenics, Reproductive Technologies, and the Feminist Dilemma in JapanMiho Ogino16. Refusing Utopia's Bait: Research, Rationalizations, and Hans JonasWilliam R. LaFleurList of ContributorsIndex
"By identifying and analyzing how the unethical was justified and rationalized, the authors draw moral and political lessons from this disturbing history that we have not yet really learned. —Nie Jin"
author of Medical Ethics in China Bao]]>
By identifying and analyzing how the unethical was justified and rationalized, the authors draw moral and political lessons from this disturbing history that we have not yet really learned. —Nie Jin
Nie Jing-Bao
"By identifying and analyzing how the unethical was justified and rationalized, the authors draw moral and political lessons from this disturbing history that we have not yet really learned."--(Nie Jing-Bao, author of Medical Ethics in China)
author of Medical Ethics in China - Bao
By identifying and analyzing how the unethical was justified and rationalized, the authors draw moral and political lessons from this disturbing history that we have not yet really learned. —Nie Jin
Director, International Program, The Hastings Center - Daniel Callahan
"A great deal has been written in recent years about human subject research. This book is different and invaluable. Its focus is at once historical and international, bringing together commentators and scholars from a number of countries and a variety of disciplines. Human subject research raises one of the basic moral problems of modern medicine: in trying to do research to save the lives of the sick, how do we protect those whom we must use to carry out the research? This book deals richly and directly with a history of human subject research that has had many dark moments. This book will help us remember what many would prefer to forget."
Bao Dongni
By identifying and analyzing how the unethical was justified and rationalized, the authors draw moral and political lessons from this disturbing history that we have not yet really learned. —Nie Jin
author of Medical Ethics in China Bao
"By identifying and analyzing how the unethical was justified and rationalized, the authors draw moral and political lessons from this disturbing history that we have not yet really learned. —Nie Jin"
Steven H. Miles
"This collection of essays examines the past and future of evil state-sponsored research. It's multinational authors bring fresh perspectives on twentieth century experiments by Germany, Japan and United States. The book's second half looks to the future. Diverse authors reflect on how an un-self critical acceptance of medical risks; new concepts of body, death and embryos; and utopian visions of the cornucopia of science may be obscuring lessons from bitter experiences that we believe would deliver us from evil."--(Steven H Miles, MD, Professor of Medicine and Bioethics, University of Minnesota)
