Scientists use data from Nazi human experiments

Press, 9 May 1984, Page 21

Scientists use data from Nazi human experiments

NZPA-AP Washington Scientists are using information derived from brutal Nazi experiments on concentration camp prisoners. One medical researcher says he feels uneasy about it but cannot get the data elsewhere. “I do not want to have to. use this data, but there are no other and will be no other in an ethical world,” Dr John Hayward, a researcher in Victoria, British Columbia, told the “Journal-American” recently. Dr Hayward uses information from Nazi experiments on hypothermia to predict survival times in cold water. Although admitting the ethical dilemmas presented by use of the information and by its questionable accuracy, scientists said the Nazi experiments were the only source of some information. They said they used the information only to develop better medical treatments. The Nazi experiments were conducted on Jews, gipsies, Polish Catholic priests, and political prisoners. For example, men were held, often naked, in tanks of ice water for two to five hours. Sometimes they were deliberately chilled to

death. As they died, Nazi scientists measured their temperatures, blood, urine, heartbeats, and breathing. Nazis did these water experiments to test first-aid measures for pilots shot down over the North Sea. Nazis are credited with the finding that the best way to rewarm a chilled person is with a warm water bath. Modern researchers in hypothermia use the data to develop new rescue and treatment methods. The experiments were condemned as criminal and a scientific failure during the 1946-47 Nuremberg trials of 23 Nazi doctors accused of murder and inhuman acts. Before the end of World War 11, Nazi scientists published results of some of their concentration camp experiments in German medical journals. These are available in most medical libraries. In other experiments, healthy prisoners were injected with the bacteria that cause typhus fever, a fatal disease. In others, women’s legs were slit open and the wounds left to fester inside casts. “I have rationalised it a little bit,” said Dr Hayward, about his use of the Nazi data. “But to not use it would be equally bad. I am

trying to make somthing constructive out of it. If it turns into more grief to use it, then I would be pleased to stop.” The “Journal-American” said there were at least 45 scientific reports published since World War II that drew upon the Nazi experiments for information. Some reports referred to the experiments only historically, but most used the Nazi data for clinical information. Dr Hayward said he used to put moral qualifiers on his references to Nazi data, but not now. “Even though in my view it was unfortunate and gruesome... Ido not think we should be making comments of that nature in a scientific paper,” he said. “It is not the role to adopt a moralistic tone in the published scientific literature. These are the facts. That is the essence of science.” Dr Ronal Banner, of the Jewish Ethical Medical Study Group in Philadelphia, disagrees. “I am not against citing them, but I am chagrined that someone would refer to those experiments without mentioning something about the way the information was gained. It shows a lack: of conscience,” he told the newspaper.