Bioethics, biopolitics and medical regulation: learning from the Nazi doctor experience

The phenomenon of abuse committed by medical practitioners during the Nazi era generated the creation of a series of important human rights instruments. Its evolution from sterilisation of persons with intellectual disabilities and euthanasia of those with mental illnesses constituted a dreadful fusing of legal and medical initiatives. Together these made possible the dehumanising rhetoric and then actions against Jews, the creation of the death camps by doctors, and the commission of human experiment atrocities by medical practitioners at the camps. There remains much that we must remember and learn if we are to formulate effective checks and balances to reduce the risk or repetition of such conduct. Numbered among these is a preparedness to name "evil" when it occurs so as to facilitate distinctions being drawn between conduct that is professionally acceptable and that which is repugnant and inconsistent with all principles of ethical conduct by medical practitioners.