Dark Medicine: Rationalizing Unethical Medical Research [Paperback]

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.

Where does one set the limits on research involving human subjects?

William R. LaFleur is the E. Dale Saunders Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and author ofLiquid Life: Abortion and Buddhism in Japan.

Gernot B?hme recently retired as Professor of Philosophy at the Technical University of Darmstadt. His books in English includeCoping with ScienceandEthics in Context: The Art of Dealing with Serious Questions.

Susumu Shimazono is Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Tokyo and serves on the Japanese Prime Minister's Advisory Panel on Bioethics.

Lafleur and his coeditors have assembled a very useful group of essays looking at the abuse of medical research in wartime Japan and Germany, as well as in postwar America. . . . Recommended.

A fascinating and timely new book . . . The take-home message of the 16 contributors to Dark Medicine is that a nation's books on past episodes of unethical practice should never be fully closed, and that ethical committees in science and medicine should never neglect the historical perspective of their own and other countries.