The National WWII Museum
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Tulane University School of Medicine
present:
"Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race"
with Los Angeles Civil Trial Attorney
Baruch C. Cohen
“The Ethics of Using Medical Data from Nazi Experiments”
September 13, 2012, 6:30p.m.
Tulane University School of Medicine
Dixon Hall, Tulane Uptown Campus
New Orleans, LA 70012
Following World War II, leading Nazi doctors were brought to justice at Nuremberg after revealing evidence of sadistic human experiments at concentration camps. Since the Nuremberg trials, our society has had to confront the reality that the Nazi doctors were guilty of premeditated murder masqueraded as research. But what about the continued use of the Nazi doctors’ medical research? Is it ever appropriate to use data as morally repugnant as that which was extracted from victims of Nazism? Is so, under what circumstances? Los Angeles civil trial attorney Baruch C. Cohen presents these issues from a Jewish ethical perspective, citing from Talmudic & Rabbinic sources; using his trademark trial skills and compelling powerpoint presentation.
Tulane University School of Medicine is partnering with the National World War II Museum to bring Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race, an exhibit created by and on loan from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., to New Orleans. The exhibit will open July 25 and remain on display through October 15. This extraordinary exhibit examines the alliance between physicians, scientists and the Nazis that led to the murder of millions. From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany carried out a campaign to "cleanse" German society of people viewed as biological threats to the nation's "health." Enlisting the help of physicians and medically trained geneticists, psychiatrists, and anthropologists, the Nazis developed racial health policies that started with the mass sterilization of "hereditarily diseased" persons and ended with the near annihilation of European Jewry. Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race traces this history from the early 20th-century international eugenics movement to the development of the Nazi regime's "science of race." It also challenges viewers to reflect on the present-day interest in genetic manipulation that promotes the possibility of human perfection. "These issues and how they influenced fields like bioethics are topics of import," says Dr. Benjamin P. Sachs, dean of the Tulane University School of Medicine. "We hope both our medical community and the general public will walk away from 'Deadly Medicine' with a better understanding that respect for all human beings has to be the essence of the medical profession. Today, the medical community has very strict safeguards to protect human subjects who volunteer to participate in biomedical research. These safeguards were put in place because of international outrage regarding human experimentation by the Nazis."
