Convened by: Dr. Jonathan K. Crane

Monday & Wednesday from 11:00-12:30

Course Description

Perhaps the most significant watershed moment in modern biomedical ethics occurred nearly 75 years ago in Nuremberg, Germany.  In 1946-1947, an American tribunal accused dozens of Nazi doctors and medical researchers of war crimes and crimes against humanity for performing not just illegal medicine but unethical medicine in wartime camps, communities, and clinics.  From the ashes of such immoral medicine emerged what is now known as the Nuremberg Code, which became the basis for all subsequent biomedical research ethics and, in many ways, modern medicine.  How did such bad medicine come about?  How was it justified?  What was at stake?  This course considers the complex relations between Nazi and American biomedical science from the mid-19th Century through to the Nuremberg Medical Trial.  It culminates in an experiential conversation about potentially dangerous, ethically dubious yet medically urgent research. 

This course is relevant to many fields of study: medicine, nursing, public health, law, history, religion, anthropology, psychology, ethics, sociology, and more.  It addresses many concerns that cross these fields, such as research protocols and research ethics, exploitation, and protection of vulnerable populations, defining abnormality and designing measurements thereof.  And it challenges claims to American (moral and medical) exceptionalism by demonstrating the myriad ways American science, politics and especially eugenics influenced Weimar and Nazi Germany.  Along the way students will engage archival materials, primary documents, film footage, trial testimonies, biomedical research, public policies and statutes, diverse secondary scholarship, and guest lecturers from across Emory and around the world.  Such sources challenge students to consider the histories of their chosen fields and those fields’ claims of integrity.