Medical Ethics and Human Rights: Legacies of Nuremberg
![handle is hein.journals/hlps3 and id is 115 raw text is: MEDICAL ETHICS AND HUMAN RIGHTS:
LEGACIES OF NUREMBERG'
George J. Annas*
Michael A. Grodin
Many of our most important human rights documents are the
product of the world's horror during the carnage of World War II.
The broadest and most powerful declaration of human rights, the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, was adopted by the mem-
bership of the new United Nations in 1948. But there are also much
more specific statements of the world's aspirations for all of its
inhabitants. August 1997 marked the 50th anniversary of the con-
clusion of the trial of Nazi physicians at Nuremberg, a trial which
has been variously designated as the Doctors' Trial and the
Medical Case.2 In addition to documenting atrocities committed
by physicians and scientists during the war, the primary product of
the trial has come to be known as the Nuremberg Code, a judicial
codification of ten prerequisites for the moral and legal use of
human beings in experiments. Anniversaries provide us with an
opportunity to reflect on the past, but also to renew our efforts to
plan for the future. Have we learned the lessons of the Doctors'
1. Adapted from 2 HEALTH & HUM. RTS. 1, 7-21 (1996) and 276 JAmA 20, 1682-83
(1996).
* Geroge J. Annas, Professor and Chair of Health Law Department, Boston University
School of Public Health; A.B., J.D. Harvard; M.P.H. Harvard School of Public Health;
D.H.L. (hon.), Salem State College. Michael A. Grodin, Professor of Health Law, Boston
University Schools of Medicine and Public Health; B.S. Massachusetts Institute of
Technology; M.D. Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
2. GEORGE J. ANNAs & MICHAEL A. GRODIN, THm NAZI DocroRs AND THE
NUREMBERG CODE: HUMAN RIGHTs IN HuMAN EXPERIMENTATION, (1992); and TRIALS OF
WAR CRIMINALS BEFORE THE NUREMBERG MILITARY TRIBUNAL UNDER CONTROL
CouNciL 10, VoLs. I AND 2 (WASHINGTON, D.C.: SUPERINTENDENT OF DocuiENTs, U.S.
GoVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE, 1951) [HEREINAFrER TRIAL]; MILITARY TRIBUNAL, CASE
1, UNITED STATES V. KARL BRANDT, ET AL., OCTOBER 1946-APRIL 1949.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/hlps3&div=12&collection=journals&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Medical Ethics and Human Rights: Legacies of Nuremberg
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