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Using Nazi Scientific Data

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Robert M. Martin
Robert M. Martin
Affiliation:
Dalhousie University
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Extract

In a series of experiments done in wartime Nazi Germany, inmates of the Dachau concentration camp were exposed to cold by being immersed in ice water, or kept outside in freezing temperatures; their responses were measured, and various techniques were used in an attempt to revive them. The immediate application of these hypothermia studies was to the war effort, to try to protect or save soldiers exposed to cold water or air. An account of the procedures and results of these experiments was written by an American officer, Major Leo Alexander, on the basis of his post-war discovery of documents and interviews in Germany. These reports reveal the ghastly and abominable details of the experiments.

Recent scientific work in British Columbia has caused some ethical debate when it consulted the Alexander report and used some of the Nazi experimental data. The scientists in the Hypothermia Unit of the University of Victoria, unsurprisingly but reassuringly, have no intention of repeating the Nazi atrocities, and condemn them. The current controversy concerns the morality of their using the Alexander data in their study. This out-of-the-way case has some small intrinsic interest; but its consideration leads to broader concerns.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1986 , pp. 403 - 411
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1986

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References

1 Alexander, L., The Treatment of Shockfrom Prolonged Exposure to Cold, Especially in Water (Washington, DC: Office of the Publication Board, Department of Commerce, 1946)Google Scholar.

2 Ibid., 67.

3 E.g., the Tuskegee Syphilis Study (1932–1970) in which poor infected black males, I believing that they were receiving proper medical care, in fact were given inadequate treatment or none at all, and many died. Mentioned in Munson, Ronald, Intervention and Reflection: Basic Issues in Medical Ethics (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1979), 230–231Google Scholar.

4 I have distinguished ceremonies which harm or benefit evil- or good-doers—punishment and reward—from those that merely deplore or celebrate them. It is à curious fact which might merit some philosophical musing that among the former sort, we have far more ceremonies of punishment than of reward; but among the latter, there is à preponderance of ceremonies of respect over those of disrespect.

5 Certain philosophers of religion (a good example is Santayana) attribute this error to the mistaken reading of the symbolic or poetical or mythological as literal. See Santayana, George, Reason in Religion (New York: Collier Books. 1962). See especially chap. 3Google Scholar.

6 The anology with language is suggested: here too conventional symbols permit mutual understanding, and individual expression. But there are differences. Acts which express moral attitudes, while sharing to some extent the communicative social aspect of language, have à far stronger function of individual expression; so while à private language may be impossible, à private language of moral reaction is not. A stronger analogy is with art, in which public and private symbols coexist.

7 Ceremonies are in fact often costly: we bury our dead in expensive coffins. The “waste” involved in such ceremonies is no accident; there is undeniably à widespread tendency toward seeing such ceremonies as more meaningful when they are more costly. Santayana tries to legitimize this under the général category of religious sacrifice—throwing away utiles seems to many to be à suitable way to express respect. It is perhaps suggestive to compare this with the proposal that we should throw away the possibly valuable Alexander data.

8 Letter from Dr. John Eckerson, November 5, 1984.

9 Thanks for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper are due to many of my colleagues in the Dalhousie Philosophy Department. I also express sincere appreciation to two scientists in the Hypothermia Project at the University of Victoria, Drs. John D. Eckerson and John Hayward, for their supportive reactions to an earlier draft of this paper, and for their supplying me with à copy of the Alexander report.

10 Summa Theologica, Pt. 2–2, Q. 96. Thanks to Professor Thomas Hurka for pointing this out to me.