Talk:Nazi human experimentation

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[edit] Early discussion

I paraphrased the first 2 sections as I was unsure about copyright. Someone else pasted in the rest. I hope it was OK to paste. I don't know if it was copyright. Barbara Shack 07:28, 30 January 2004 hahahaha I have now copyedited, expanded, merged in some material from the Mengele article, and added links to other relevant articles. -- The Anome 14:06, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

You should note the the first head of the german institute for aerospacemedicine was a defendant in that trial. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 80.133.106.218 (talk • contribs) 01:39, 20 March 2004.

[edit] Results

are there any reports analyzing the overall results of these experiments? was any worthwhile science achieved during this horrible process, ignoring the moral crimes? Vroman 05:24, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

In brief, no. The issue was raised some years ago in the New England Journal of Medicine in reference to the ethics of using or publishing the results of Nazi research, particularly the Dachau hypothermia "experiments". Several pertinent points were made:
  • United States Brigadier General Telford Taylor stated "these experiments revealed nothing which civilized medicine can use" (i.e., they have no utility)
  • Arnold Relman, editor of the New England Journal of Medicine pointed out that one cannot trust results reported by men willing to grossly violate all human standards (i.e., they have no credibility).
  • If these experiments had not been carried out, science would be no different today. (i.e., they had no significance)
  • The methodology is so substandard it can hardly be considered science at all. (i.e. they had no validity)
  • The theories espoused were so suffused with racial ideology as to make them worthless.
  • Others, of course, argued that there was data that could be salvaged, and that it was moral so to do.
  • What is, however, clear is that these experiments were so crude they produced no important information and no significant discoveries. - Nunh-huh 06:04, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Would it be useful to move move the above arguments to the main article? I looked up on this subject primarily to see if the results of these experiments were used later, in addition to why/why not. --mabahj 23:56, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

However, keep in mind that, during the times of the trial, Leo Alexander, U.S. Medical Army Corps, same man who proposed the Nuremberg Code, found the studies to be conducted in a reliable manner. ----

[edit] Sea Water Experiments

We unfortunately are not able to prove, that these experiments caused severe injury although we know, that Beiglböck defines down the suffering of his victims in the doctors' trial. Nevertheless we can assume those injuries due to several affidavits.--Bühler 04:49, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'm also a bit dubious that these experiments ever ocurred, even though they are in the nuhremberg logs. It has been known for a long time how to remove salt from water. It is nothing new or complex. That the germans would be studying this as the eastern front was moving closer to East Prussia is ridiculous. Lets just remember the Nuhremberg trials also mention the Jew soap and lamp shades and what not, which have been proven to be false. Some common sense should be used in this article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.23.177.56 (talk • contribs) 07:28, 6 November 2005.

Why are you dubious that they occured? The experiments weren't to see if they could remove salt from water -- it was to test supplements that would cause human kidneys to compensate for the extra salt load.

[edit] No more pain

I am fully aware that all these experiments are dehumanizing and inflicted unbearable suffering onto the victims. However, stating several times "they suffered and had great pain" does not contribute to the impact or the image of this subject. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Blikschade (talk • contribs) 23:20, 30 June 2005.

I agree with this assessment and find it offensive that so many adjectives are used to describe the suffering of the Jews. I think this is bordering on POV. 24.215.146.229 22:45, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
I was thinking the same thing as I read this page: it seems unnecessary to keep repeating that the victims suffered pain after the descriptions of the experiments which make the pain quite clear. That's three votes for and none against, so I'll make the change. If anyone wants to revert, it's fine, but please give reasons. 68.163.191.90 17:46, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Numbers of Subjects/Victims

The article states "large numbers of people" were experimented upon, are there any ballpark figures as to exactly how many were subjected to experimentation? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Killridemedly (talk • contribs) 18:38, 3 October 2005.

Shame on You
I think it is wrong that this article partially condones the Nuremberg Experimentations. In this article, it says that although these experiments were wrong, they did hold dubious scientific value . It is wrong to say that the deliberate annihilation of the Jewish race, in the name of science, is condoned.If these experiments hold, "dubious scientific value", then why were these literally mad scientist put on trial for their CRIMES. They werent worthwhile scientific hypothesis' being tested, they were CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY!!!!!!!! -----Andrew N. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 206.113.19.127 (talk • contribs) 16:34, 8 December 2005.
You might want to look up the word "dubious" in a dictionary. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.190.81.199 (talk • contribs) 15:30, 9 December 2005.

[edit] Expansion

I think that MORE should be written on the UNscientific experiments performed by Mengele and others on prisoners. I speak of the dissection of live infants; the surgical removal, sans anesthesia, of the heart of a living and fully conscious person; the sex changes performed on adolescents who didnt want them... This article paints these vicious men as true scientists, by focusing solely on the experiments they performed which may have had some scientific value. The men who performed these experiments are the same men who committed the aforementioned acts of sheer violence. We should not leave these other, unscientific violent acts unmentioned when we speak of these men. I request that someone with a deeper well of historical knowledge undertake this. -- Erika. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.128.235.119 (talk • contribs) 18:44, 6 December 2005.

Errr, whether a not the adolescents 'wanted' the sex change operations doesn't affect their scientific value in the slightest--if the surgeon notes that procedure XYZ failed to produce an aesthetically or functionally appealing vagina/clitoris/penis, well then that sounds like a scientific observation to me. The lack of consent from the subject doesn't magically make the experiment unscientific. And I imagine that dissection of an live infant or the removal of a live heart could actually reveal a great deal--tissues behave very differently with they are ALIVE. (Anesthesia, too, affects things like heart rate.) A corpse that has been dead for merely an hour has already undergone substantial chemical and physical changes. But even if I am wrong and these brutal details didn't contribute to science, you are most certainly wrong in saying that they detracted from science. Science doesn't care about whether the subjects suffered or not. Neither making them suffer more NOR making them suffer less will inherently affect the scientific validity of an experiment. I emphasized "inherently" because, as I have just shown, there are conceivably some applications where being more cruel can yield more information (and there are likewise similar cases where being less cruel yields more information.) Science does not REQUIRE morality. Am I in favor of moral science and moral scientists, and against scientists who would commit these atrocities? ABSOLUTELY. But, my reasons for opposing them are moral, not scientific.
It's an important distinction to make. Saying that they're immoral and should never be repeated is VASTLY different from saying that they're immoral AND unscientific. If you want to argue about their records and the *scientific* (not the moral) aspects of their methodology, go right ahead... but (by analogy) just because someone is--let's say--a murderer and a rapist, that doesn't automatically mean that person is also a thief and a counterfiter and a jaywalker and a pigfucker. In other words, it's possible for someone to be a shitty human being and yet still be a decent scientist. --Lode Runner 05:11, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Results, again

This is copied from Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science:

Did any of those awful non-consensual experiments make any significant or lasting contributions to medical knowledge? moink 04:13, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

This question is addressed at Talk:Nazi human experimentation. Short answer, no. Melchoir 06:19, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
The U.S. made a secret deal with Shiro Ishii, Unit 731, and Unit Ei 1644 leaders that germ warfare data based on human experimentation would be offered in exchange for immunity from war-crimes prosecution in 1948. The US also made secret deals with Nazis. How many have not been since unclassified is unknown. WAS 4.250 16:02, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Untrue, I recall reading in Hans Rudel's book, Stuka Pilot, there was a discovery about how pilots could survive in freezing water. This was discovered using human experimentation. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 12.41.204.3 (talk • contribs) 15:00, 7 March 2006.
Ah. That deserves checking on, if anyone has access to the book. I'll copy this discussion to the talk page. Melchoir 02:14, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Melchoir 02:25, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] DR. MENGELE

1. Why did Dr.Mengele take a liking to dwarves, gypsies, twins, and infants?

2.I have heard that Dr. Mengele was phycologically normal. How is this possible?

1: Dwarves, gypsies and twins seem logical. And to some degree infants as well.
Gypsies are, like jews, a more or less "pure" race they dont intermarrige with other races on any larger scale.
Thus it seems logical to test gypsies, jews and germans to discover and document
any difference between the races to underline the germen superiority.

Twins seems logical as well, two absolutely identical individuals to be used in same experiment.
In the same way docters today use 2 groups to try out new drugs, one drug group and one control group.

Dwarwes were back then a raciel mystery, why did some people give birth to dwarfs, had this to do with ancestory? Was the dwarf superior to the jew?
What where the fysiological differences between dwarfs and normal people, did they respond differently to drugs and so forth. I don't know about infants, but it might be due to the difference in regeneration capacaties and imune defenses between infants and adults.

Hope it helps... --81.161.190.12 15:16, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

I always thought that the Jews intermarried frequently. Look at the Sephardi Jews and the Ashkenazi Jews.Caval valor 15:22, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

The followning is a quote from the Ashkenazi Jews article.
"For roughly a thousand years, the Ashkenazi Jews were a reproductively isolated population in Europe, despite living in many countries, with little inflow or outflow from migration, conversion, or intermarriage with other groups, including other Jews. Human geneticists have identified genetic variations that have high frequencies among Ashkenazi Jews, but not in the general European population. (...) But since the middle of the 20th century, many Ashkenazi Jews have intermarried,"
As the aricle clearly states, the race was very very pure until the middle of the 20th century. Which is around 1950, and that is after the experiments were conducted. --81.161.190.12 16:52, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

  • But from what I have heard, there was plenty of inflow of genes down the centuries from children conceived by Jewish women's sexual services being demanded by non-Jewish feudal overlords and suchlike. Anthony Appleyard 17:14, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I have purposefully refrained from answering your question until now, because first of all. I'm not in the mood to disguss human experimantation and mass murder during christmas. Second, because your question is off-topic and i really hate clogging up talk pages with off-topic chatter. The inflow from feudal lords you mention is negligabel. And have had no influence on the purity of the jewish blood. If you want a longer explanation, ask in the Ashkenazi Jews talk pages. --81.161.190.12 01:53, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

On this page we say that *all* of the people Mengele experimented on were dissected. On another page we say that at least a few of the people he experimented on were killed simply to be dissected. This is obviously an inconsistency and calls for citations. 140.247.163.163 04:34, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Little scientific value?

"Almost all of Mengele's experiments were of little scientific value"

I question this statement, because testing drugs on living subjects is commonly done on animals such as dogs or monkeys to this day, and is indeed a federal requirement for new drugs. Utilizing actual humans as test subjects is actually better, since a monkey isn't modeling a human's reaction to a drug, it's modeling a monkey's reaction to a drug. Using an actual human, models a human acurately, and is of scientific value.

While human experimentaion is cruel, I think this statement is POV in attempting to debunk the usefulness of such experimentations. Malamockq 16:10, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps he didn't follow the scientific method? - Francis Tyers · 15:57, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Trying to claim this is "POV" is ludicrous. Read Baumslag and Weindling for your answer. For example, Mengele injected dye into children's eyes to see if he could change their eye color. By no stretch of the imagination would that be an experiment of any scientific value. Mengele also removed organs and limbs just to see what would happen to the victims. Again, not a valid scientific experiment. Mengele would also shock people with increasingly higher voltages just to see what would happen, another invalid scientific experiment.207.69.137.34 23:37, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
"For example, Mengele injected dye into children's eyes to see if he could change their eye color. By no stretch of the imagination would that be an experiment of any scientific value."
You're wrong--it's perfectly scientific. Or rather, it could be--I do not know all of the grisly details--but your opinion of goal of the scientific endeavor does not have any bearing on whether or not it is, in fact, a scientific endeavor. Let's put aside the humanitarian issues for a moment (Yes, it was wrong. He was evil. I'm not justifying what he did. Etc.) and pretend that it was a Beverly Hills doctor performing the experiments on willing test subjects, with the intention on marketing the eye coloring-changing surgery to the rich and vain. He does the experiments, notes the complications (chance of blindness?), notes whether the dye is permanent (and if not, how long it lasts), etc. The fact that the goal is, in my (and apparently yours too) opinion utterly stupid and cruel does not preclude it from being science. Proving that it's possible to inject dye into someone's eye without causing blindness is science. Proving that it's NOT possible to inject dye into someone's eye without causing blindness is also science. My point is, "stupid" science is still science, regardless as to whether or not you agree that the thing being tested has any merit.
"Mengele also removed organs and limbs just to see what would happen to the victims."
Again, I do not know the details, but it very well could be scientific. If he found out that most people can live for around an hour after a hand amputation, well, that's a notable discovery is it not? Even if he didn't do anything like test out various methods of stopping the blood flow, the research could still conceivably have applications, e.g. in triage.
I don't like the guy and I do NOT agree that it was worth the cost in human lives, but that doesn't make it bad science. If you're going to argue that he didn't do ANY methodical collection of data or make any attempt at all to follow the scientific method, then fine--but the mere subject matter alone is not enough to call him unscientific. --Lode Runner 23:13, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

In order for the experiments to have true value they must be performed using very specific and controlled criteria. An experiment must be able to be recreated for it to be valid. There would be no way to exactly recreate these experiments (morality aside) because they did not provide the proper documentation. The eye-color changing experiment for example, Mengle left no documentation about the exact chemical structure of the dye and made no effort to be sure that each of the experiments in one group were performed in exactly the same manner, with exactly the same amount of dye, etc. Had these doctor's controlled their experiments and provided the copious documentation required to fulfill the "must be repeatable" clause, then there is a distinct possibilty that their work would have been of useful. However, their slipshod manner and blatant disregard for the rules of proper research techniques insured that they can be remembered only as cruel frauds. BonnieJosephine 19:03, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

While I still cannot specifically comment on whether Mengele's experiments were scientifically sound, you are wrong in implying that ALL Nazi human experimentation was bereft of scientific merit. See the the "Citations of Shame" section--apparently, the Nazi's cruel experiments did at least give us an insight into how to treat hypothermia.
You have to understand, even if Mengele's (or any of the other experimenter's) data was incomplete or shoddy, that does not render them completely useless to science. Science uses the best data at its disposal--if the evidence is anecdotal but is at least plausible and theoretical, then perhaps it is "worth investigating." If there are some small studies done that show significant results, but the methodology wasn't closely monitored--the test subjects were not sufficiently random, the instruments perhaps not ideally suited, causality not sufficiently isolated, etc.--then there is a tentative, but still very useful scientific link. Scientists endeavor to build up to a reasonably reliable foundation of proof, but sometimes this is not always possible--indeed, in this case it may be completely impossible to build upon (and thus replace) the detestable Nazi data. Not because we lack the money or the desire, but because we are not willing to commit the same immoral behavior. You CAN'T do a large-scale, randomly-selected, double-blind study on the lifesaving effects of rewarming methods as applied to people who are chilled nearly to the point of death. You can use other primates (which have fur, different metabolisms, etc.) as test subjects, but that's still not anywhere near the surefire reliability that human subjects provide (in a scientifically-controled environment, mind you... no, field studies on accidental hypothermia victims are NOT the same--the variables involved are far too, er, variable.) Thus, it may be that the Nazi data on hypothermia will be quoted for a long, long time to come. It is BECAUSE it is so morally reprehensible that it is irreplaceable--if the experiment can never be duplicated (let alone improved), then it will always remain the best data available. --Lode Runner 04:40, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Pardon my ignorance, I am usure how to cite the above statements I made. There is an excellent Wiki article on the Scientific Method, seen here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method, that supports my conclusion that these experiments can have no scientific value. 204.94.13.56 17:02, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

There is a guide to citing Wikipedia articles here. The best citation would be a book by an expert in the field, including page number and ISBN. Web sources are more problematic, ranging from random blogs, which are not acceptable, to the websites of respectable academic bodies, such as United States Holocaust Memorial Museum [1], which are fine. Squiddy | (squirt ink?) 17:17, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, Squiddy. Okay, citations for my statements, Office of the Chief Administrative Officer of the USDA (www.ocio.usda.gov), Office of Science and Technology, USA (www.ostp.gov), and Office of Science and Innovation, UK (www.dti.gov.uk/science.) Does that work? I'm new to this and would like to help without being that irritating newbie.

I agree with Lode Runner. How do we know that Mengle left no documentation on his experiments? Isn't it likely that he would destroy such things to prevent them from incriminating him? If he honestly wanted to know if dye would change person's eye color, he would have conducted the tests properly and with correct documentation, otherwise the test would serve no purpose. If he wanted to just torture people, there are other ways to do that other than with experiments like this. He was testing various things on humans and observing their results. It was cruel, but cruel isn't necessarily the same as unscientific. For example, a man got a nobel prize for lobotomy, and that was first tested on humans which involved the deaths of two people. In any case we probably don't know enough about his experiments to say if they were scientific or not, so we shouldn't make the claim either way. If this is a neutral encyclopedia, we must always remember that. 65.40.239.99 23:31, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
I agree: on the page we're talking about, we read "The full extent of Mengele's work will never be known because the two truckloads of records he sent to Dr Otmar von Verschuer at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute were destroyed by the latter." I think that pulls the rug from under any claim that his work was definitely void of scientific merit. - Alec.brady 20:12, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Possible POV

I'm fairly sure the "Citations of shame": referring to Nazi results in later work section is POV, so I tagged it to be checked. Paj.meister 15:43, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

The Daily Telegraph is not WP and has no obligation to maintain NPOV on anything. Could you provide a fascimile of this article, for starters? Until I see evidence otherwise, I assume that there is a conversation on the scientific community about how to deal w/ Nazi research, and we should report on this contours of this conversation, rather than informing the world that citing Nazi research is at best slightly shameful. Readers can verify the claim "some people claim citing the Nazis is shameful," but the sources don't bear out a stronger claim about what is generally accepted. 140.247.163.163 04:34, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
I would say that the citation noted above, on its own, does not warrant the POV tag. What does warrant the POV tag in this case, is that these types of citations are provided as the information for the section "References to Nazi results in scientific work". There is not much talk about references to nazi results, rather, the section is on the ethics of doing that. If the section was retitled, much (but not all) of the POV problems would be dealt with. I'd vote for changing the title of this section to "Ethical considerations in citing Nazi results", emptying but keeping the "References to Nazi results in scientific work" section, and keeping the POV tag until the section is tweaked to not represent the POV that "nazi work should always be condemned when cited". For example of another POV, consider a scientist who might condemn the Nazi work personally, but feels that condemning the Nazi work in his published paper was not appropiate. Mystyc1 00:16, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
  • It seems that here we in the Wikipedia community are ordered by Wikipedia to be NPOV in reporting an order that in another community (the general scientific community) there is an order to be non-NPOV about a matter. Anthony Appleyard 07:37, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
The section was titled "Citations of shame" (with the dbl quote marks) until quite recently. Several of the external links in the section use this phrase in the title, and as Mystyc1 points out, the section is more about the ethical considerations in using Nazi experimental results than about the actual use of those results. I'd favour going back to the earlier title, but the section needs work (ie using the external links as refs for some actual prose). As usual, we take an NPOV stance, but if the majority of scientists think that it's shameful to cite Nazi results, we can of course say so. Squiddy | (squirt ink?) 09:52, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mustard gas

what is mustard gas...it was mentiond erlier but never really explaind what it was.

good point, I've linked to the relevant article, mustard gas. Squiddy | (squirt ink?) 18:48, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
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