•  
  •  
 

Abstract

Modern-day research ethics training often begins with a discussion of the medical research atrocities committed by Nazi health care professionals and the resulting 10-principle Nuremberg Code, which is often considered to be the beginning of modern-day medical research regulations. It is occasionally mentioned that Nazi dentists also conducted unethical research in the concentration camps, and a few were brought to trial. In this manuscript, I compare two studies (one medical and one dental) conducted after World War II that violated the Nuremberg Code.

I describe and compare the well-known Willowbrook Hepatitis studies conducted by infectious disease doctors on vulnerable institutionalized children in the 1950s and 1960s in the United States with the lesser-known Vipeholm Caries studies conducted by dentists on vulnerable residents of a Swedish institution for the cognitively disabled. I show how both studies violated research ethics norms articulated in the Nuremberg Code (e.g., inadequate or no informed consent; the selection of vulnerable research participants when other participants were available). I delineate and reject the similar arguments provided by both research teams about why, despite these flaws, their studies were ethical at the time they were conducted. I conclude by offering an explanation about why the Nuremberg Code went unheeded.

Download

Share

COinS