NOVA Online | Holocaust on Trial | Should They Be Used? Yes (2)

To test how to treat phosphorus burns, doctors at Ravensbruck concentration camp applied a mixture of phosphorus and rubber to inmates' skin, ignited it, and let it burn for 20 seconds.

What if you knew that many in the medical and scientific communities consider the Nazi experiments bad science?

Those who judge the Nazi experiments poor science cite several reasons. First, drawn as they were from the death camps, experimentees were usually malnourished, emaciated, and severely weakened, and thus their physiological responses to the experiments would likely be different from those of normal, healthy people. Second, Nazi doctors had political aspirations and sought results that supported Nazi racial theories. Third, the data were never replicated and, in an ethical world, can never be replicated. Finally, soaked with the blood of their victims, the experiments were morally tainted, which renders them scientifically invalid. For these reasons, many dismiss the experiments as pseudoscience.

"[The experiments were] a ghostly failure as well as a hideous crime ... [They] revealed nothing which civilized medicine could use."
—Brigadier General Telford Taylor, chief counsel for the prosecution at Nuremberg "Doctors Trial," 1946-47 [5]

"Injecting a half-starved young girl with phenol to see how quickly she will die or trying out various forms of phosgene gas on camp inmates in the hope of finding cheap, clean, and efficient modes of killing so the state can effectively prosecute genocide is not the sort of activity associated with the term research."
—Dr. Arthur Caplan, bioethicist now at the University of Pennsylvania [6]

"I don't see how any credence can be given to the work of unethical investigators. Given the source of the information and the way in which it was obtained, how can anyone believe it? How can anyone want to believe it?"
—Dr. Arnold S. Relman, editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, on the Nazi hypothermia work [7]

"[The Dachau hypothermia experiments were] conducted without an orderly experimental protocol [and] with inadequate methods and an erratic execution. ... There is also evidence of data falsification and suggestions of fabrication. Many conclusions are not supported by the facts presented. The flawed science is compounded by evidence that the director of the project showed a consistent pattern of dishonesty and deception in his professional as well as his personal life, thereby stripping the study of the last vestige of credibility. On analysis, the Dachau hypothermia study has all the ingredients of a scientific fraud, and rejection of the data on purely scientific grounds is inevitable."
—Dr. Robert L. Berger, New England Deaconness Hospital and Harvard Medical School [8]

Based on what you now know, do you think doctors and scientists should be able to use data from Nazi death-camp experiments?

Yes | No

References
5. Cohen, p. 14.
6. Caplan, Arthur L. "How Did Medicine Go So Wrong?" In Caplan, p. 65.
7. Associated Press. "Minnesota Scientist Plans to Publish Nazi Experiment on Freezing." The New York Times, 5/12/88, p. 28.
8. Berger, pp. 1439-1440.

Photo: National Archives, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives

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