From Nuremberg to Guantánamo: Medical Ethics Then and Now

On October 25, 1946, three weeks after the handing down of the verdicts of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, the United States established Military Tribunal I for the trial of twenty-three Nazi physicians. The charges, delivered by Brigadier General Telford Taylor on December 9, 1946, form a seminal chapter in the history of medical ethics and, specifically, medical ethics in war. The list of noxious experiments condemned as war crimes and crimes against humanity on civilians and prisoners of war is by now more or less familiar—high-altitude experiments; freezing experiments; malaria experiments; sulfanilamide experiments; bone, muscle, and nerve regeneration and bone transplantation experiments; sea water experiments; jaundice and spotted fever experiments; sterilization experiments; experiments with poison and with incendiary bombs.