On December 9th, 1946, an American military tribunal opened criminal proceedings against twenty-three German physicians for their participation in crimes against humanity (“Online”.) In his opening statement, Brigadier General Telford Taylor stated that, “The defe

Even as it set precedents for future war crimes trials, the Nuremberg Doctor’s Trial also established a firm guideline for acceptable and legal human experimentation. The judges faced the task of determining what laws the doctors had broken as “no international law or informal statement differentiated between legal and illegal human experimentation” (“Online”). Two American Doctors, Andrew Ivy and Leo Alexander, submitted a memorandum to the United States Counsel for War Crimes which listed six points that defined what was considered to be legitimate research. Based on these guidelines, the judges changed the six points into ten, and based their decisions off of the new laws. (“Online”) These laws became known as the Nuremberg Code. In essence, the code states that voluntary consent is required and all efforts must be made to preserve and protect human life and comforts. This code has become the basic legal and ethical guide for medical experimentation on humans (“Nuremberg”).

The Nuremberg Doctors trial seemed to some to be a brutal and unfair event. Even though the trial resulted in death sentences for seven, it managed to sort out and administer justice to those who were a nemesis to humanity. The guidelines for medical experiments the trial set are still a strong force today. In my opinion, these t

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