Michael A. Grodin – författare

This interdisciplinary text is the first to address the many questions and controversies surrounding the use of children as research subjects. Experts in the field of biomedical and behavioural research with children consider the issues in terms of biomedical science, child psychology, ethics, and the law, providing a careful balance between individual and societal benefits. This practical guide will be invaluable to everyone involved in performing or reviewing research involving children.

The Nazi atrocities committed by researchers and physicians during the Second World War prompted the development of the Nuremberg Code to guide the ethics of modern medical experimentation utilizing voluntary human subjects. Since its inception, the Code has been viewed as one of the cornerstones of modern bioethical thought. This book examines the nature, scope and proper place of the Nuremberg Code in medical research. The ramifications of this important document are thoroughly discussed by a distinguished group of contemporary professionals from the fields of both medicine and law. The historical setting of the Code's creation, some modern parallels, and the current attitude of German physicians toward the crimes of the Nazi era, are discussed in early chapters. The book progresses to a powerful account of the Doctors' Trial at Nuremberg, its resulting verdict, and the Code's development. The Code's contemporary influence on both American and international law is examined in its historical context and discussed in terms of its universality: are the foundational ethics of the Code as valid today as when it was originally formed? The editors conclude with a chapter on foreseeable future developments.

This anthology is the culmination of some 20 years of interest in the field of bioethics. I began my studies in the philosophy of science while at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1970. My interest then, as now, continues to be the complex interrelationship between science and the humanities. While grounded in philosophy and molecular biology, I yearned for a more applied realm for exploration and integration of the value laden nature of science in the public policy arena. After receiving my medical degree from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, I continued my work in medical ethics focusing primarily on the ethics of human experimentation, newborn and reproductive technologies, and human genetics. As I completed my clinical training at the University of California at Los Angeles and at Harvard, I had the opportunity to use philosophical ethics in an attempt to understand, frame and resolve moral dilemmas in clinical practice. As a professor of medical ethics at Boston University for the past decade, I have taught bioethics at the undergraduate, graduate and post doctoral levels. Over these years I have become increasingly frustrated by the state of contemporary bioethics. Medicine continues to serve as an interesting paradigm for philosophers to explore novel theories about life, death, mind, suffering and meaning. Philosophy, however, has not served medicine quite so well as a source of knowledge and discipline to resolve the contemporary moral dilemmas found in health care.

Following decades of silence about the involvement of doctors, medical researchers and other health professionals in the Holocaust and other National Socialist (Nazi) crimes, scholars in recent years have produced a growing body of research that reveals the pervasive extent of that complicity. This interdisciplinary collection of studies presents documentation of the critical role medicine played in realizing the policies of Hitler’s regime. It traces the history of Nazi medicine from its roots in the racial theories of the 1920s, through its manifestations during the Nazi period, on to legacies and continuities from the postwar years to the present.