The document discusses the ethical issues around using medical data obtained unethically, such as from Nazi experiments on concentration camp prisoners. While this data could potentially save lives today, it was obtained without consent and caused immense suffering. There are reasonable arguments on both sides. On one hand, using the data honors the victims and ensures their suffering wasn't in vain, but it also risks encouraging future unethical experiments. Overall, there is no clear consensus on whether or how such data could or should be used.

1. The Temptation
against Humanity
Ghost Lee

2. Why?
• What is the motivation that makes people devoid
humanity, commit atrocities?
• What kind of enticement changes the hunger of
knowledge into the surrogates of demon?

3. • If the value of these atrocities could be the
stepping stone to praise and respect of all human
kinds, lead to a historical fame, WOULD YOU DO
IT?

4. Definition?
• Eponym：
• an item which provides a name-source for a
particular place, tribe era, discovery, or other
item to be named
• an item which acts as a name-recipient

5. Examples?
• Pernkopf Atlas of Human Anatomy
• Eduard Pernkopf (1888-1955)
• ‘Pernkopf organized for the bodies of over a
thousand people executed by the Gestapo to
serve as models for the atlas drawings’

6. • Reiter’s disease, Reiter’s spirochete, Reiter’s test
• Hans Conrad Julius Reiter (1881-1969)
• ‘During World War II, Reiter, a physician leader of
the Nazi party, authorised medical experiments
on concentration camp prisoners’

7. • Wegener’s granulomatosis
• Friedrich Wegener (1907-1990)
• ‘While no firm proof exists, it is suspected that in
his capacity as pathologist in the Lodz ghetto,
Wegener may have been involved in atrocities at
that site related to research’

8. Others?
And these are not all…

9. • However, these behaviours not only happens when
the dictator rampaged, when the war was
committed, THEY ARE STILL HAPPENING…

10. Solutions?
• Deprive the name of medical terms of these human
right abusers, prevent them from being recognised
by all human kind?
• Consider the neutrality of subjective datas acquired
through unethical methods, prevent them from
utilisation or publication?

11. Name alternation?

12. • ‘Removal of such names attached to medical
syndromes is not trivial, and should also be
considered by the international Helsinki Committee
as appropriate action under circumstances of
unethical medical practice and thus rooted in
proper medical nomenclature.’

13. Data neutrality?
• According to the restrictions nowadays, it’d be
impossible for scientists to conduct experiments on
living human, lead to the unbreakable threshold of
current obstacles
• Hypothermia (Pozos’ Chilling Dilemma), Phosgene
(EPA Research on Air Pollution),etc.

14. • If the experiments are conducted against humanity,
are the results reliable or usable?
• Simply ‘Data’ or ‘Auschwitz bar of soap’?

15. • During WWII, Nazi doctors and scientists
performed a series of medical and other
experiments on concentration-camp inmates.
• They undertook these studies without consent of
the patients, who were often left maimed or dead at
the end of the ordeal.
• These experiments include: high altitude, freezing,
sterilization, twins, poison, TB, seawater, etc.
The Ethics of Using Medical
Data from Nazi Experiments

16. • Many feel that findings from those studies should
never be published or used.
• However, what if these data might be potentially
save the lives today?
• WOULD YOU TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THEM?

17. Cons?
• Medical competence of the Nazi doctors has been
questioned
• Hippocratic Oath ‘…I will use treatment to help the sick according to my
ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrongdoing…’
• Many in the medical and scientific communities
consider the Nazi experiments bad science
• Malnourished experimentees, biased aspirations, un-replicated
experiments, tainted experiments

18. • Set a dangerous precedent, sanctioning unethical
human experiments and possibly encouraging
similarly deplorable acts
• For other experiments against humanity but Nazi experiments, if
researchers cite and use results from the latter, might that not give tacit
encouragement to further unethical studies using human beings?
• Using the data would make us the Nazi
experimenters’ moral accessories
• Making use of the data wrenched so brutally from helpless victims make
us the victims’ “retrospective torturers” and them our “retrospective
guinea pigs”

19. • Many survivors of the Nazi experiments feel
strongly that the data should never be used
• Some survivors of Dr. Josef Mengele’s twins experiments “ No! No! No! I
(we) suffered, and it is no ‘medical data’ or ’information’ whatsoever!!!”
• A huge number of victims of the experiments
suffered
• Obviously, the hundreds of thousands of who died at the hands of Nazi
death-camp doctors cannot tell their story of unfathomable fear,
unbearable pain, and senseless death.

20. Pros?
• Not publishing and/or using the date could
strengthen the arguments of those who say the
Holocaust never happened
• Most scholars, whether or not they advocate using the Nazi data, hold
that the fact that the experiments happened should never forgotten, lest
such atrocities recur.
• Such data could not be obtained today
• Hypothermia expert Dr. Robert Pozos never let a participant’s temperature
drop more than 3.6°F (below 95°F), but Nazi experimenters let their
victims’ interior body temperatures drop to 79.7°F

21. • Many deem information morally neutral
• The results of Nazi experiments can only be judged scientifically, not
morally; data are neither good nor bad, they are just data.
• The data under morally usage might help save lives
or benefit people today
• Scientists and physicians have gained valuable insights from other horrific
events in history. should we consider the Nazi data any differently?

22. • Many survivors of the medical experiments feel the
data should be used
• Some survivors of Dr. Josef Mengele’s twins experiments “If these
experiments will be of any help to humanity, then I am in favour of them
being used as needed”
• Not using the data lend a belated dignity to the
victims, so that their lives were not lost for nothing
• Lucien A. Ballin “The suffering is done - let someone benefit from all the
pain”

23. • What would you choose?

24. Reference
• Wikipedia: List of medical eponyms with Nazi associations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
List_of_medical_eponyms_with_Nazi_associations
• Eponyms and the Nazi Era: Time to Remember and Time for
Change http://www.ima.org.il/FilesUpload/IMAJ/0/45/22885.pdf
• Nazi Medical Experimentation: The Ethics of Using Medical Data
from Nazi Experiments https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/
Judaism/naziexp.html
• Results of Death-Camp Experiments: Should They Be Used?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/holocaust/experiintro2.html