Mass Murder by Medicine: The Dark Side of Medical Professionalism (VIDEO) Nuremberg Review Part1
Mass Murder by Medicine: The Dark Side of Medical Professionalism (VIDEO) Nuremberg Review Part1
Medical Ethics Part4
Humanistic Professionalism
When I studied chiropractic (1992-1996) and naturopathic medicine (1996-1999), we as students were of course admonished to become professional and act in a professional manner. In both of these contexts, “professionalism” implied timeliness, preparation, studiousness, composure/equanimity, appropriate business-level attire for clinical encounters and adult-level maturity especially when dealing with sensitive topics, examinations and experiences. Notable in both of these curricula was our training in Ethics, including the weighing of clinical decisions based on risk:benefit ratios (eg, nonmaleficence [first, do no harm] and beneficence); respect for patient autonomy was assumed and protected at every moment of every encounter. From chiropractic and naturopathic training—not from medical training—did I learn the concepts and nuances of Medical Ethics; see my three previous posts on Ethics which are linked at the bottom of this page.
Mechanistic Professionalism
In medical school and residency training, “professionalism” had a much darker implication; in these contexts, “professionalism” essentially meant “Do as you are told; don’t think for yourself.”
In medical school and residency training, “professionalism” had an additional and at times much darker implication; in these contexts, “professionalism” essentially meant “do as you are told; don’t think for yourself.” We were supposed to go along with whatever our professors said, even when they were obviously wrong and even when they contradicted their very own reading assignments from authoritative texts. I saw many patients misinformed by their doctors, for example when Family Medicine faculty would tell diabetic patients to eat more carbohydrates, which would only accelerate their diabetes. I saw patients abused, especially if they were poor, vulnerable/anesthetized, and non-Caucasian. I saw one (Asian) patient killed by our two (Caucasian) supervising physicians, who openly admitted to each other, “We are killing her.” I was taught by my supervisor in Internal Medicine in an accredited residency program how he cheated the government reimbursement procedures to gain more money for less work. I was told that I had to receive and administer (eg, force) vaccines even when these procedures were contrary to common sense, science, patient demographic profile and needs, patient autonomy and informed consent. I reported some events to supervisors only to receive personal punishments and threats; these are the reasons why I—as an enthusiastic, eager, compassionate, talented physician—resigned from hospital medicine. In contrast to my experiences in chiropractic and naturopathic education, in medical training any meaningful education in Ethics was lacking even though we did have a required course in Ethics that vacillated between irrelevant and ridiculous lectures on one end and absurdly simplistic PBL (problem-based learning) exercises on the other end; I guarantee you that not a single graduate from our top-ranked medical school could name the 4 core pillars of medical ethics.
Mass Murder by Medical Doctors: The Tragic Birth of the Nuremberg Code of Human Rights and Medical Ethics
“Intellectuals, scientists and most particularly the medical profession played a decisive role in the Nazi racial policy. From the beginning, the doctors were at the service of racial purification. Starting in 1937 with the sterilization of children… and then in 1938-39…with the selection and mass murder of tens of thousands of the mentally ill… Later, the doctors did not hesitate to use prisoners in several concentration camps as guinea pigs… Medical experiments for military purposes were performed in vivo, on living prisoners.”
Germany’s Nazis murdered and experimented upon millions of innocent people; following World War 2, an international court tried many of the involved medical doctors and condemned them to death, typically by hanging. From these trials, the Nuremberg Code of Medical Ethics was born from which we have our modern ethical rules of 1) providing benefit, 2) not causing harm, 3) informed consent and respect for autonomy, especially the right to refuse treatment and the right to withdraw from treatment, and 4) distributive justice, such that resources are allocated for the good of the society and not hoarded for a small selected group. Of these four, the ethical principle of autonomy = informed consent = power to deny and withdraw is the most clear, the most obvious, and the least subjective—it is crystal clear and is the first of the 10 items that comprise the Nuremberg Code:
The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision.
Now, here we are 70 years later, and governments, hospital systems, and medical organizations are flagrantly rejecting and denying the basic tenets of this previously internationally-enforceable rule of medical professionalism and human rights.
“In the interest of public health and national security” are words that can be twisted to justify any crime against humanity, as Germany’s Nazis already demonstrated in World War 2.
As such, nothing is stopping these governments and organizations from repeating the experiments, coercion, abuse and various forms of mistreatment and torture that have already been condemned. This means that individual doctors, courts, independent organizations, and individual patients/person must now take the lead in articulating and defending these fundamental human rights. Otherwise, the general population will be defenseless against medical mandates and human rights violations promulgated “in the interest of public health and national security”, words that can be twisted to justify any crime against humanity, as Germany’s Nazis already showed.
