Human Life: When is it really Human?

I recently borrowed a book from the library titled Doctors from Hell by Vivien Spitz. Ms. Spitz was a court reporter during the Nuremberg trials and witnessed first hand the testimony of certified German physicians who during the 1930’s and 1940’s ordered, or took part in, test experimentation of prisoners for the purpose of learning more about what causes death and how diseases can be cured. The prisoners were Jews, Russian soldiers, Gypsies and even Polish catholic priests whose only crime was that they took a stand against the deportation of Jewish people being sent to concentration camps.

It is interesting to note that the doctors generally saw these experiments as necessary for the betterment of German society and of course to help the German soldiers who were trying to take over the whole world. The types of experiments conducted on these people included, high altitude stress test, freezing, malaria, mustard gas, typhus, smallpox and so on. Prisoners were used, against their will, as test subjects so the Nazi researchers could potentially find a cure to these and other human maladies. In a number of experiments the prisoners were given lethal doses of substances to see how long it would take for them to die. In the end there were an untold number of deaths with little scientific knowledge to benefit anyone.

How these doctors eventually came to the point of doing this is easy to understand when one considers that the prisoners were looked upon as inferior, even less than human. In short the doctors forgot their Hippocratic oath which states in part, “…I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone. I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan and similarly I will not give a woman anything to cause an abortion…”

One German doctor, Karl Brandt who was eventually executed for his involvement in these experiments, was quoted as saying “The general need for experiments on human beings…has been recognized by all nations as a military necessity.” This occurred at a time when the Third Reich was attempting to perfect the Arian race and any foreigners or, non-pure Germans (those considered impure because they possessed Jewish blood lines), were considered to be of lesser value than those of pure German stock.

Dr. Brandt was not alone in his assessment of the need for human research to benefit society. In fact, today there are many in our society who share his opinion. Surprisingly those same people look at the Nazi doctors and wonder in astonishment how licensed physicians could be directly involved with human experiments no matter what the benefit. However, this is easy to understand as long as one does not see the experimental subject as completely human in fact the less human they appear the easier it is to experiment on them.

On March 9th 2009, President Obama signed into legislation an order that permits federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. The president did this to the applause of numerous Democratic members of congress. The gist of his argument for signing the legislation is the presumption that embryonic stem cell research will pave the way for cures to diseases that, at present, remain incurable.

Embryonic stem cell research is highly controversial because the cells in question are from human embryos. No matter what the outcome of the research it is crucial to understand that this is not the first time human death has been the result of research and not the first time it was done with the hope of benefiting mankind with the results.

Embryonic stem cells do not appear human and most don’t see them as human. Make no mistake the purpose of this research is to find cures and benefit mankind; just like the research that was done in Germany 60 years ago on people who also weren’t considered human.

However, much to the delight of our researchers they won’t be held accountable for their actions certainly not the same way as the German doctors of WWII; at least not in this lifetime.