나치 시대 의사들의 잘못에 대한 독일의사협회(German Medical Association)의 사과

(출처 : http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1346175)

"그 당시의 범죄는 단순힘 몇몇 의사들 개개인의 행위가 아니었다. 

의과대학, 의생명과학 연구소의 저명한 인사들은 물론이며 

의사협회와 각 전공 학회의 대표격 인물들의 상당한 개입이 있었다."

""우리는 나치 정권하에서 자행된 의료 범죄에 대해 의사에게 막중한 책임이 있음을 인정하며, 

이를 현재와 미래에 대한 엄중한 경고로서 받아들이고자 한다."

“The crimes were simply not the acts of individual doctors, but rather took place with the substantial involvement of leading representatives of the medical association and medical specialist bodies, as well as with the considerable participation of eminent representatives of university medicine and renowned biomedical research facilities,” the group

said in the declaration. “We acknowledge the substantial responsibility of doctors for the medical crimes committed under the Nazi regime and regard these events as a warning for the present and the future.”

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THIS MONTH MARKS THE ANNIVERsary of the conclusion of a 140-day trial that gripped the world 65 years ago, the Doctors Trial in Nuremberg, Germany. On trial were 20 physicians and 3 nonphysician Nazi officials who were charged with organizing and participating in war crimes and crimes against humanity, including medical experiments and procedures conducted on concentration camp prisoners and others without their consent. 

Of the 20 physicians on trial, 16 were found guilty, 4 of whom were executed for their crimes.

But the extent of the involvement of German physicians went well beyond the 20 physicians tried in the Doctors Trial—a fact finally acknowledged by the German Medical Association a few months ago.

In a long-awaited and striking statement, the society used the occasion of its 115th meeting, fittingly held in Nuremberg in late May, to adopt the Nuremberg Declaration of the German Medical Assembly 2012, which said, “We acknowledge the substantial responsibility of doctors for the medical crimes committed under the Nazi regime and regard these events as a warning for the present and the future.”

“In contrast to still widely accepted views, the initiative for the most serious human rights violations did not originate from the political authorities at the time, but rather from physicians themselves,” the declaration said.

The Nuremberg Doctors Trial revealed that organized medicine, medical schools, and scores of ordinary physicians participated in unethical human experimentation and genocide. However, despite its key involvement during the Nazi era, the German Medical Association has never acknowledged its role or the role of German physicians in World War II atrocities—until now.

“The crimes were simply not the acts of individual doctors, but rather took place with the substantial involvement of leading representatives of the medical association and medical specialist bodies, as well as with the considerable participation of eminent representatives of university medicine and renowned biomedical research facilities,” the group said in the declaration. “We acknowledge the substantial responsibility of doctors for the medical crimes committed under the Nazi regime and regard these events as a warning for the present and the future.”

One of the legacies of the Doctors Trial is the Nuremberg Code, which defines core principles for rights of participants in medical research, such as voluntary consent and the absence of coercion (http://tinyurl.com/794hahy).

The German Medical Association’s declaration acknowledged that the “human rights violations perpetrated in the name of medicine under the Nazi regime continue to have repercussions to this day and raise questions concerning the way in which physicians perceive themselves, their professional behavior, and medical ethics.” 

Of the many lessons to be learned from distortions of medical practice that occurred during the Nazi era, among the most important is understanding the human motivations that led physicians to subordinate the needs of individual patients to the demands of the government.

“The German physicians believed they were behaving morally and following the dictates of the Hippocratic Oath by transforming the doctorpatient relationship into a new relationship in which the state became the doctor and the German people became the ‘patient,’ or the volk,” said Sheldon Rubenfeld, MD, clinical professor of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and president of the Center for Medicine After the Holocaust, in Houston, in an e-mail.

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JAMA. 2012 Aug 15;308(7):657-8. doi: 10.1001/jama.2012.9649.

German medical group: apology for Nazi physicians' actions, warning for future.

Livingston EH.