The Nuremberg Code (Permissible Medical Experiments)

Summary

The Nuremberg Code is a list of ten principles for research on human beings. It forms a short section, titled 'Permissible Medical Experiments', of the judgment handed down in August 1947 in the trial known as the Doctors' Trial, the first of the twelve trials held by American military tribunals at Nuremberg after the main trial of Nazi leaders. Twenty-three defendants, most of them physicians, were accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity for experiments carried out without consent on prisoners in concentration camps. Prisoners had been frozen in icy water, exposed to the conditions of high altitude in pressure chambers, deliberately infected with malaria, typhus and other diseases, wounded and infected to test drugs, and sterilized. Many died or were permanently injured. The defendants argued that research on humans was practised elsewhere and that there were no clear international rules. In reply the judges set out the principles they believed all civilized medical research must observe. The first and longest principle states that the voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. The person must be legally able to consent, free from force, fraud or coercion, and must understand the nature, purpose and risks of the experiment; the duty to obtain consent belongs personally to each researcher. The remaining nine principles require that experiments aim at results useful to society and unobtainable by other means; that they be based on animal studies and knowledge of the disease; that they avoid unnecessary suffering; that none be done where death or disabling injury is expected; that risk never exceed the humanitarian importance of the problem; that subjects be protected; that only qualified scientists conduct them; that the subject may stop at any time; and that the scientist must stop if continuing is likely to cause injury or death. Sixteen defendants were convicted and seven were executed in 1948. The Code influenced the Declaration of Helsinki (1964), the Belmont Report (1979) and research ethics worldwide.

Top Lessons

• Consent and dignity

  The Code begins with consent because the crimes it answered treated prisoners as material rather than persons. Respecting a person means letting him decide what is done to his body.

• Science under law

  The Doctors' Trial showed that scientific skill without moral limits can serve terrible ends. The Code places research under ethical rules.

• Limits on risk

  Principles 5 and 6 limit how much risk any experiment may impose, no matter how important the question.

• For the Christian reader

  Christian teaching holds that every human being bears the image of God and may never be used merely as a means. The Code puts into legal form the conviction that the weak and imprisoned must be protected, not exploited.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

The foundational statement of research ethics, written in response to Nazi medical crimes.

• Principle 1

  Informed, voluntary consent.

• Principles 5–10

  Limits on risk and the right to stop.