Unethical Research During World War II

During World War II, German researchers performed a large number of experiments in concentration camps and elsewhere. Subject-victims of Nazi research were predominantly Jews, but also included Romanies (Gypsies), prisoners of war, political prisoners, and others (Germany [Territory Under Allied Occupation] Caplan). Nazi experimental atrocities included investigation of quicker and more efficient means of inducing sexual sterilization (including clandestine radiation dosing and unanesthetized male and female castration) and death (an area of study Leo Alexander [1949] termed "thanatology," which includes studies of techniques for undetectable individual assassination, murder that mimics natural deathas well as mass murder). Among the best-known cases were the hypothermia experiments, which investigated mechanisms of death by freezing and means of preventing it. These studies, motivated by the loss of German pilots over the North Sea, included immersing prisoners in freezing water and observing freezing's lethal physiological pathways. Beginning in 1932, the U. S. Public Health Service funded a study of the natural progression of untreated syphilis in black men. Four hundred subject-victims were studied, along with 200 uninfected control subjects. The study, whose first published scientific paper appeared in 1936, continued until a newspaper account of it appeared in 1972. Its subject-victims were uninformed or misinformed about the purpose of the study, as well as its associated interventions. For example, participants were told that painful lumbar punctures were given as treatment, when in fact treatment. A department of the Imperial Japanese Army located near Harbin (then puppet state of Manchukuo, in northeast China), experimented with prisoner vivisection, dismemberment, bacteria inoculation and induced epidemics on a very large scale from 1932 onward through the Second Sino-Japanese war. With the expansion of the empire during World War II, many other units were implemented in conquered cities such as Nanking (Unit 1644), Beijing (Unit 1855), Guangzhou (Unit 8604) and Singapore (Unit 9420). After the war, Supreme commander of occupation Douglas MacArthur gave immunity in the name of the United States to Shiro Ishii and all members of the units in exchange for all of the results. The United States blocked Soviet access to this information; some unit members were judged by the Soviets during the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials. At the end of the war, 23 Nazi doctors and scientists were put on trial for the unethical treatment of concentration camp inmates, often used as research subjects with fatal consequences

(see Nazi human experimentation). Out of those 23, 15 were convicted, 7 were condemned to death, 9 received prison sentences from 10 years to life, and 7 were acquitted. De-classified documents of the National Archives revealed that during the 1930s and 1940s, the British Army allegedly used hundreds of British and native British Indian Army soldiers as "guinea pigs" in their experiments to determine if mustard gas inflicted greater damage on Indian skin compared to British skin. It is unclear whether the trial subjects, some of whom were hospitalised by their injuries, were all volunteers. Fort Detrick in Maryland was the headquarters of US biological warfare experiments. Operation White coat involved the injection of infectious agents to observe their effects in human subjects.

Reaction: The world was actively involved in a war between two superpowers, one with a government ruled by the people known as a republic, and the other ruled by one man known as a totalitarian regime. An author by the name of George Orwell provided a realistic insight into the future concerning the totalitarian regimes before and after 1948. the Nazi s perceived the Jewish community and other non-Aryan groups deviant and outsiders of the German society. If you were a true German, Adolph Hitler believed you should hate these people with a vengeance. The Jewish community made up a great percentage of Germany at the time Hitler and his totalitarianism began to make face. Many people have contributed to the cruel treatment of human beings, specifically Jews, in Nazi Germany during the second World War. This is a report on the damage carried out by some of the Nazi criminals working under the rule of Adolf Hitler. Many people contributed in Hitler's attempt to carry out his 'Final Solution'. Among these people are Ernst Roehm, Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Himmler, and Hermann Wilhelm Goering. While I discuss how they partook in World War Two, keep in mind their actions will, and have, left a mark on the world forever.