The Nuremberg Code was introduced in August 1947, after the Nuremberg trials.

In these trials, Nazi

doctors were convicted of the crimes committed during human experiments on concentration camp
prisoners. It attempted to give clear rules about what was legal and what was not when conducting
human experiments.

Slide No. 4

- This research was done mainly on patients in hospital, often without their consent

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- In any case, both informing the subject and obtaining the subject's consent were preconditions
to experimentation.

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- Despite all this, however, the directive was not legally binding and little is known of its impact
on human experimentation.

Slide No. 10

- Besides the principles of beneficence and nonmaleficence, the regulations were based on
patient autonomy and a legal doctrine of informed consent.

- New therapy may be applied only if consent or proxy consent has been given in a clear and
undebatable manner following appropriate information

- New therapy may be introduced without consent only if it is urgently required and cannot be
postponed because of the need to save life or prevent severe damage to health. In those cases a written
report must clearly outline the preconditions.

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- The victims included the mentally retarded, the institutionalized mentally ill, and the physically
impaired

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- Most died or were permanently crippled as a result. Most of the victims were Jews, Poles,
Russians, and also Roma (Gypsies).

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- For the most part they are nameless dead. To their murderers, these wretched people were not
individuals at all. They came in wholesale lots and were treated worse than animals.
- Malaria: Healthy inmates were infected by mosquitoes or by injections of extracts of the
mucous glands of female mosquitoes. After contracting the disease, the subjects were treated with
various drugs to test their relative efficiency. Over 1,200 people were used in these experiments and
more than 600 died as a result.

- Sea water: From about July 1944 to about September 1944, experiments were conducted at the
Dachau concentration camp to study various methods of making sea water drinkable. At one point, a
group of roughly 90 Roma were deprived of food and given nothing but sea water to drink by Dr. Hans
Eppinger, leaving them gravely injured.

- They were so dehydrated that others observed them licking freshly mopped floors in an attempt
to get drinkable water.

- High-altitude: In early 1942, prisoners at Dachau concentration camp were used by Sigmund
Rascher in experiments to aid German pilots who had to eject at high altitudes. A low-pressure chamber
containing these prisoners was used to simulate conditions at altitudes of up to 20,000 m (66,000 ft). It
was rumored that Rascher performed vivisections on the brains of victims who survived the initial
experiment. Of the 200 subjects, 80 died outright, and the others were executed.

- Bone transplantation: From about September 1942 to about December 1943 experiments were
conducted at the Ravensbrück concentration camp, for the benefit of the German Armed Forces, to
study bone, muscle, and nerve regeneration, and bone transplantation from one person to another.
Sections of bones, muscles, and nerves were removed from the subjects without use of anesthesia. As a
result of these operations, many victims suffered intense agony, mutilation, and permanent disability.

- Extreme Cold: In 1941, the Luftwaffe conducted experiments with the intent of discovering
means to prevent and treat hypothermia. There were 360 to 400 experiments and 280 to 300 victims
indicating some victims suffered more than one experiment.

- Another study placed prisoners naked in the open air for several hours with temperatures as low
as −6 °C (21 °F). Besides studying the physical effects of cold exposure, the experimenters also assessed
different methods of rewarming survivors. "One assistant later testified that some victims were thrown
into boiling water for rewarming."

- Approximately 100 people are reported to have died as a result of these experiments.

- Poison Bullets: Somewhere between December 1943 and October 1944, experiments were
conducted at Buchenwald to investigate the effect of various poisons. The poisons were secretly
administered to experimental subjects in their food.

- The victims died as a result of the poison or were killed immediately in order to permit
autopsies. In September 1944, experimental subjects were shot with poisonous bullets, suffered torture
and often died.
Slide No. 19

- The trial described and documented some of the most gruesome and painful medical
experiments carried out by Nazi Doctors.

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- Most were doctors, though three were not. Some had been eminent physicians.

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- But most of these miserable victims were slaughtered outright or died in the course of the
tortures to which they were subjected.

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- Amongst other requirements, this document set forth the requirement of voluntary informed
consent of the human subject.

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- PME: The principles established by this code for medical practice now have been extended into
general codes of medical ethics.

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- The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.

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- The WMA encourages others who are involved in medical research involving human subjects to
adopt these principles.

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- 2. Even the best proven interventions must be evaluated continually through research for their
safety, effectiveness, efficiency, accessibility and quality

Slide No. 43.

- 4. The responsibility for the protection of research subjects must always rest with the physician
or other health care professionals and never with the research subjects, even though they have given
consent.

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- 7. Research on patients or healthy volunteers requires the supervision of a competent and
appropriately qualified physician or other health care professional.

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- Measures to minimize the risks must be implemented. The risks must be continuously
monitored, assessed and documented by the researcher.

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- When the risks are found to outweigh the potential benefits or when there is conclusive proof of
definitive outcomes, physicians must assess whether to continue, modify or immediately stop the study.