Although he was appalled by these experiments, Alexander could not help thinking that these methods could have some military value, and he even suggested that rapid and intensive rewarming in hot water should be immediately adopted as the treatment of choice by the air–sea rescue services of the US Armed forces. Alexander scrutinized numerous rewarming methods, which Nazi doctors tested on inmates, and commented on their effects on participants. Alexander thought that none of the participants could have been volunteers, and most of them died from cold exposure. 6īetween May and September 1945, Alexander visited numerous concentration camp dispensaries and laboratories used by Nazi doctors interviewed camp survivors, doctors, and their assistants and examined detailed medical reports on multiple concentration camps experiments, particularly the infamous Nazi hypothermia experiments conducted by Sigmund Rascher and others at the Dachau, Germany, concentration camp. As the war ended, Alexander was detached on a special mission under the Combined Intelligence Operative Sub-Committee-an intelligence organization of several nations-to locate and gather evidence for the Nuremberg trials. Shortly after, he joined the US Army Medical Corps and was stationed in England at the American Eighth Air Force base, where he specialized in the treatment of combat fatigue in bomber air crews. 5 As the political situation in Germany deteriorated, he settled in the United States and became a US citizen in 1938. 4 Born in Vienna in 1905 into an educated Jewish family, Alexander earned his medical degree from the University of Vienna and did his internship and residency in Germany at Frankfurt University. Leopold Alexander, or “Leo” as he liked to be called, a Viennese-born American neuropsychiatrist, was no stranger to American and German medicine, including the experimental medical practices of the Third Reich. For them, Hippocratic physicians could do no wrong. But because the trial was exclusively run by the US government, Thompson played no formal or official role in it.Īt the 70th anniversary of the Doctors’ Trial, it is fitting to recall and explore how these physicians came to propose that the judges adopt strict research rules for the conduct of human experimentation and yet were unable to see their applicability to their own research. 3 Like Alexander, Thompson gathered intelligence documents for the upcoming trial, interviewed defendants and victims of Nazi experiments, and held extensive discussions with Alexander and Ivy on medical crimes both before and during the trial. Thompson, a Canadian experimental psychiatrist and air force officer working for the British delegation, played a minor role. Their influence on the judges and the Nuremberg Code were significant and deserve to be better known. Three physicians, who proudly identified themselves as Hippocratic physicians sworn to “do no harm,” played commanding roles for the prosecution: 2 Americans, Leopold Alexander and Andrew C. That murder and torture are crimes that must be prosecuted and punished was indisputable, 1 but, as chief prosecutor General Telford Taylor declared in his opening statement, “This is no mere murder trial.” He insisted that the court, “as an agent of the United States and as the voice of humanity, stamp these acts, and the ideas which engendered them, as barbarous and criminal.” 1 2 The 23 defendants were respected and distinguished medical scientists and physicians who were charged with murder and torture in the context of unspeakable medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners. 1 Judged by almost any standard, this trial was remarkable. The Doctors’ Trial, also known as the Nuremberg Medical Trial (1946–1947), is best known for its Nuremberg Code.
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