Physician complicity in the Holocaust. Parts 1 and 2

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11874788

Acad Emerg Med. 2002 Mar;9(3):223-31.

Ethics seminars: physician complicity in the Holocaust: historical review and reflections on emergency medicine in the 21st century, part I.

Geiderman JM.

Source

Ruth and Harry Roman Emergency Department, Burns and Allen Research Institute, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, USA. geiderman@cshs.org

Abstract

Individual physicians as well as the medical establishment were complicit in a wide range of activities carried out by the Nazis during the period that encompassed the Holocaust. This article examines these activities and lists eight moral failures attributable to physicians of this era. The accompanying article reviews the ethical pitfalls encountered by German physicians during the Nazi era and examines them in relationship to current issues. It also explores the role of professionalism then and now. In particular, ethical issues presently confronting emergency physicians are examined through this prism.

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11874789

Acad Emerg Med. 2002 Mar;9(3):232-40.

Ethics seminars: physician complicity in the Holocaust: historical review and reflections on emergency medicine in the 21st century, part II.

Geiderman JM.

Source

Ruth and Harry Roman Emergency Department, Burns and Allen Research Institute, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA 90048, USA. geiderman@cshs.org

Abstract

Part I of this seminar in ethics reviewed the participation of German physicians and the German medical establishment in carrying out Nazi policies and listed eight moral failures that could be attributed to doctors during the dark period of history known as the Holocaust. The collective acts that occurred during this period have, arguably, become a benchmark for abject ethical collapse on the part of mankind. Part II contemplates a variety of contemporary issues through the prism of the Holocaust. This article reviews and categorizes ethical pitfalls encountered by physicians during the Nazi era and examines them in relationship to several current issues. It also focuses on ethical concerns and challenges that confront contemporary emergency practitioners, some of which have parallels, though certainly not direct comparators, in the Nazi era.