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Medical experiments conducted on human beings during World War 2 are relevant to this day. From an ethical point of view are evidence of the ignorance and moral blindness of society towards jews and other minorities who were put into concentration camps. However on the other hand, they can be considered as a source of medical research and analysis. Whether or not this data is useful to us is strongly debatable. From scientific, as well as ethical perspectives it has been proven that most of these gruesome experiments are of no factual use to us now, nor at the time of their happening, as most conclusions have had already been made by previous doctors, which meant this was an unnecessarily brutal test of what was already once proven.
It is inevitable to admit these procedures were brutal and inhumane, but it is also unclear what the exact intentions of these drastic experiments were. The enormous amount of people brought into these concentration camps gave SS doctors a practical opportunity and easy access to countless living human bodies that were considered worthless and were planned to be killed anyway. Even at the time, using human beings as literal lab rats would have been illegal, however thanks to the Nazis reign and ability to keep things secret to the public, all of this was possible. The extent to which some doctors and scientists went to were remarkable and are still being questioned today
There were various types of experiments being run, however they were put into three main categories. One was psychological trauma research with intentions of military use, another medicinal and surgical research and the last was long-term impact research aimed at validating pseudoscientific Nazi race theories. Their results were expectedly mixed so conclusions were hard to make.
Ever since the initial ideas were being made for the processes of these experiments, trauma research with military applications was realistically the most promising, as it could be easily tested during war and in combat. These were undertaken by commision from the German military, who tried to get straight forward answers about likely damages humans were going to suffer in combat. Simple and elementary questions were asked, for researchers to get consistent and uncomplicated results and data. This was achieved, so to this day some of this data is used.
Nazis were known for their narrow beliefs of what people should look like. They planned to reach their absurd ideals through a number of tactics, one being sterilization. This was often tested on women who were injected unknown chemicals that caused them many health problems short and long term. Operations such as castration were conducted. What is concerning however, is the fact that castration was known to work for centuries, so SS doctors were unnecessarily repeating what was already discovered.
A rather interesting case was doctor Josef Mengele (also known as The Angel of Death) specialised in experiments in Auschwitz. He dealt with eye-color modification and twin tests that were studied into detailed with the ultimate aim of finding out why and how they are replicated. Twin research is initially an effective study source, as identical twins have the exact same genes so they can determine disease causes. Mengele ended up experimenting on twins by infusing blue color into their eyes with intentions of expanding the Aryan race. . Overall around 3000 twins ended up in Auschwitz but very few survived.
One of them being Eva and Miriam Mozes from Romania. They were transported to Auschwitz in March of 1944 and ended up going through countless severe surgeries scarring them forever. In an interview Eva said: ‘I was given five injections. That evening I developed extremely high fever. I was trembling. My arms and my legs were swollen, huge size. Mengele and Dr. Konig and three other doctors came in the next morning. They looked at my fever chart, and Dr. Mengele said, laughingly, ‘Too bad, she is so young. She has only two weeks to live ..’
Doctor Mengele later also attempted to stitch twins together to create conjoined twins, which Eva had witnessed when a set of gypsy twins were sown back to back and were brought back to the lager. “Mengele had attempted to create a Siamese twin by connecting blood vessels and organs. The twins screamed day and night until gangrene set in, and after three days, they died.”
Another type of experiment that is often looked back at, is hypothermia testing, which was extremely mortal and unrealistic to survive. Data was collected on the cooling rates of each inmate, after being thrown into freezing cold water of the North Sea in Dachau. SS doctor, Sigmund Rascher tested survival gear on these inmates for the Luftwaffe and this way analysed whether it is safe and practical enough for legitimate use. It took him a number of methods of reheating hypothermic inmates to establish a rate of cooling of humans in cold water and find information on how rewarming can be successful. Doctor Raschers charts provided fairly thorough data of end stage hypothermia in humans. Although most patients died during this experiment and therefore is often considered morally incorrect to use for exact results, it did somehow benefit factual knowledge on this specific scientific topic. Some of his conclusions were even mentioned in real scientific papers from the 1950s to the 1980s. Later on in 1980, American researcher Robert Pozos suggested that using this Nazi hypothermia data was beneficial in advancing approaches of rescuing people in cold water in accidents, such as boat catastrophes. His proposal was however declined by the New England Journal of Medicine, that didn’t agree it was right to publish publicly.
As a result of the increasing heights in which planes flew, Luftwaffe created another project to study and compare the effects of high-altitude, low-pressure exposure on human bodies. The goal was to figure out what works for the German pilots who were to fly in those planes. To study this, Rascher carried away a harsh process, of hanging the inmates in parachute harnesses and sealing them in the pressure chambers. He even had some of his patients be unconscious to present a passed out pilote. During this experiment, air was pumping in and out of the chamber, causing people to chew their lips and tongues and claw their faces. Later on doctor Rascher investigated their brains that were, due to this process, swollen. 200 victims took part in this experiment of which 80 died in the air and the rest were later on executed. This experiment helped minimally, as pilots where later on dying of too high altitude anyway, which couldn’t be controlled much in the first place.
Radiation was experimented on people by inviting them inside a room where they were told to fill in questionnaires while they were sitting where radiation was happening. Victims got severe burns and mostly ended up having cancer.
Opportunities to test new drugs and medicine have risen and were tested for efficiency. During 1930 and 1940 sulfa drugs were used as new antibiotics with troublesome side effects. SS doctors in Ravensburg cut wounds in victims legs and put infected material on them that made matters even worse to ensure the wounds wouldnt heal. This way they tried to see what effects the medicine had on the wounds in following autopsies. What is concerning is that these drugs were already thoroughly certified by scientists and doctors in England and USA, which meant these tests came out less accurate and reliable anyway, so they ended up being practically of no use anyway.
Bone and nerve transplants were attempted (without any type of anesthesia) in Ravensburg too and expectedly were unsuccessful.
More drugs such as vaccines for malaria and typhoid were unreliably tested in Buchenwald, as most of the experiments were rigged to ensure for the inmates to somehow die.
Wounds from splashes of mustard gas were attempted to “be healed” by unknown substances in Sachsenhausen.
Later on in Buchenwald victims were burnt with phosphorus to investigate burn therapies; another procedure that ended up causing nothing but harm.
Gypsies were also a minority being held in concentration camps. In Dachau, doctor Hans Eppinger used 90 gypsies and tested the possibility of drinking sea water on them, by only letting them drink salty water for vast amounts of time. These people were soon struggling to drink anything possible, almost licking water from their mopped floor. This quickly led to doctor Eppinger’s conclusion that dehydration leads to fast kidney failure.
These are just some of the barbarous experiments that were undertaken on the victims of Nazi concentration camps. One would think that by commencing these procedures in such inhumane ways, at least doctors would be endeavoring to somehow positively impact and expand our pharmaceutical knowledge. Unfortunately, most scientists went into these experiments because they had no other choice. Therefore these doctors often didn’t care to carry out the experiments properly/fairly, which is why many conclusions were not made at all, so numerous lives were ended for no reason.
My grandfather, Doctor Mikolasz Korn is an example of a doctor who stood up against this by refusing to give injections of phenol to people the Germans wanted to kill. He was from Slovakia and had arrived with one of the first groups that were sent to Auschwitz. He had been told he was being sent to work thanks to his excellent physical condition. In 1942, much wasn’t yet known about the crematoria in Slovakia.
At first, he worked as a Pfleger, a nurse, which was physically very demanding, and many doctors who were assigned this job had to quit and deal with the consequences. Doctor Korn was fit enough to continue and was assigned a group of sick inmates in the Revier. He then got asked to inject people to death. He was one of the first and last Jewish doctors to refuse to do so.
Due to this he was imprisoned in Block 11 where apparently no one ever came out alive.After several days he was released, most probably because the Lagerfuehrer was replaced and is described as “one of the miracles that took place in the Lager” by my grandmother, Pola Korn Plotnicka, who survived Auschwitz together with my grandfather.
Hypothermia and low-pressure experiments are known to have given us data that could only be attained undergoing tests as ruthless as these. Doctor Rascher managed to procure fairly reliable data, as it wouldn’t be possible to conduct a test damaging someone’s brain, ears and lips.
The rest, which is the majority of these experiments ended up being unsystematic, anarchic and inadequate. Most data is considered biased because it is the nazis racial ambitions mixed with legitimate medical research, which results in a clash of information and analysis.
Even conclusions that seems to be well backed up are not of much use, as most official publication decline the offer to use them due to moral reasons.
Also it is impossible to repeat or prove most of these experiments in any benevolent way, shape or form.
It will forever be a debatable issue, whether data from these experiments is morally, as well as scientifically acceptable to use. As a result of the controversial data use, it is problematic to consider it beneficial to our knowledge. Despite finding out the statistics of hypothermia and high/low pressure survival, medically experiments conducted in concentration camps can be considered as aimless torment of incalculable innocent human beings.
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