Medical experimentation on prisoners (part 2): role of doctors in research abuses

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Published Jul 3, 2022
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Vol. 100 No. 7 (2022): Issue Jul 2022

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Meriem Gaddas
mohamed ben dhiab
Helmi Ben Saad

Abstract

The involvement of physicians as an executive tool in the excesses of medical experimentation in prisons continues to raise questions
and incomprehension. From the depths of the extermination camps under the Nazi regime to the iterative exploitation scandals after the
Second World War, the ability of certain physicians to overstep the foundations of the Hippocratic Oath of do no harm» and associate
themselves with so many atrocities will always surprise. The answers to this question seem ambiguous because the excesses of medical
experimentation in prisons should be reconsidered in their associated historical-political context. This history note, the second in a series on
medical experimentation in prisons, aims to relieve the excesses attributed to physicians during medical experimentation on prisoners.

Keywords:

Medical research - Physician - Prisoner - Second World War.

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