Main description:

The trial of the "German doctors" exposed atrocities of Nazi medical science and led to the Nuremberg Code governing human experimentation. In Japan, Unit 731 carried out hideous experiments on captured Chinese and downed American pilots. In the United States, stories linger of biological experimentation during the Korean War. This collection of essays looks at the dark medical research conducted during and after World War II. Contributors describe this research, how it was brought to light, and the rationalizations of those who perpetrated and benefited from it; look at the response to the revelations of this horrific research and its implications for present-day medicine and ethics; and offer lessons about human experimentation in an age of human embryo research and genetic engineering.

Contents:

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Knowledge Tree and Its Double Fruit William R. LaFleur

Part 1. The Gruesome Past and Lessons Not Yet Learned
1. Rationalizing Unethical Medical Research: Taking Seriously the Case of Viktor von Weizsacker Gernot Boehme
2. Medical Research, Morality, and History: The German Journal Ethik and the Limits of Human Experimentation Andreas Frewer
3. Experimentation on Humans and Informed Consent: How We Arrived Where We Are Rolf Winau
4. The Silence of the Scholars Benno Muller-Hill
5. The Ethics of Evil: The Challenge and the Lessons of Nazi Medical Experiments Arthur L. Caplan
6. Unit 731 and the Human Skulls Discovered in 1989: Physicians Carrying Out Organized Crimes Kei-ichi Tsuneishi
7. Biohazard: Unit 731 in Postwar Japanese Politics of National "Forgetfulness"
Frederick R. Dickinson
8. Biological Weapons: The United States and the Korean War G. Cameron Hurst III
9. Experimental Injury: Wound Ballistics and Aviation Medicine in Mid-century America Susan Lindee
10. Stumbling Toward Bioethics: Human Experiments Policy and the Early Cold War Jonathan D. Moreno

Part 2. The Conflicted Present and the Worrisome Future
11. Toward an Ethics of Iatrogenesis Renee C. Fox
12. Strategies for Survival versus Accepting Impermanence: Rationalizing Brain Death and Organ Transplantation Today Tetsuo Yamaori
13. The Age of a "Revolutionized Human Body" and the Right to Die Yoshihiko Komatsu
14. Why We Must Be Prudent in Research Using Human Embryos: Differing Views of Human Dignity Susumu Shimazono
15. Eugenics, Reproductive Technologies, and the Feminist Dilemma in Japan Miho Ogino
16. Refusing Utopia's Bait: Research, Rationalizations, and Hans Jonas William R. LaFleur

List of Contributors
Index