When Medicine Went Mad: Bioethics and the Holocaust

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The Nazis performed monstrous biomedical experiments on concentration camp prisoners, compiling racial and other information while slowly killing them. Should the data from these experiments be banned, or mined for their possible potential benefit? This set of papers from a 1989 symposium at the University of Minnesota (where Caplan directs the Center for Biomedical Ethics) opens with the testimonies of camp survivors, who urge that the data be shredded. Another contributor argues that the data are scientifically worthless; others agonize over the issue and conclude that the Nazi data ought to be published. Of broader interest is an essay showing how the science of racial hygiene, which supported forced sterilization of undesirable racial groups, among other policies, took hold in Germany long before the Nazis came to power. One contributor compares Nazi euthanasia to the current practice of withdrawing life-support systems from patients whose continued treatment is not ``costworthy.'' The closing paper thoughtfully looks at ethical dilemmas surrounding the Human Genome Project, an attempt to map human genes which, critics charge, could open the door to Nazi-like abuses. (Sept.)

Library Journal

Despite its fiery and garish title, When Medicine Went Mad is a sober and scholarly analysis of the Nazi physicians who--in the name of science--carried out unspeakable atrocities upon countless victims. Caplan, a national leader in bioethics, has assembled outstanding experts on the subject, including actual research subjects of this ghastly experimentation. Contributors include well-known bioethicists such as George Annas, Ronald Cranford, Benjamin Freedman, Jay Katz, Ruth Macklin, and Caplan himself. Personal testimonies by Eva Kor, Susan Vigorito, and Gisela Konopka are particularly meaningful, forming an ideal background for vexing questions about why these atrocities happened and how to insure that they never recur. Of particular value to researchers are the essays by Katz and Annas, who boldly confront the implications of Nazi medicine for today's research into the Human Genome and various other fields of study. Recommended for academic and medical school libraries.-- David A. Buehler, Charlton Memorial Hosp., Fall River, Mass.