Subject(s)
Ethics, Medical/history , Ethics, Research , Holocaust/history , Human Experimentation/history , National Socialism , Social Values , Complicity , Eugenics/history , Germany , History, 20th Century , Humans , Physicians/history , Political Systems/history , Professional Misconduct , United StatesSubject(s)
Biological Evolution , Complicity , Ethics, Medical/history , Holocaust/history , National Socialism , Political Systems/history , Prejudice , Professional Misconduct , Dehumanization , Germany , History, 20th Century , Humans , Internationality , Jews/history , Research/history , Social Values , Stress, Psychological , Vulnerable PopulationsSubject(s)
Awards and Prizes , Child Advocacy , Academies and Institutes , Child , Child Advocacy/history , History, 20th Century , Humans , New York , United StatesSubject(s)
Research , National Institutes of Health (U.S.) , New York , Research Support as Topic , United StatesABSTRACT
In January 1997, after a lengthy, careful, and difficult process, an ad hoc group, chaired by Dr. Alan R. Fleischman, a Senior Vice President of the New York Academy of Medicine (NYAM), with representation from clinical medicine, biomedical ethics, law, and the clergy, developed a position on the difficult and contentious issue of physician-assisted suicide. After substantial debate, the Board of Trustees of NYAM authorized a letter from the President of the Academy to the Justices of the United States Supreme Court and to the attorneys on both sides of the cases about to be argued before the Court. The text of that letter, which summarizes the views of the New York Academy of Medicine, is reproduced here.
Subject(s)
Societies, Medical , Suicide, Assisted , Euthanasia, Active , Humans , New York , Persons , Stress, Psychological , Vulnerable Populations , Wedge ArgumentABSTRACT
The engagement of German biomedicine in the design and execution of Nazi programs of "racial cleansing" was extensive and was organized by physicians and other professional leaders. In its active involvement and acquiescence, the German medical profession, one of the most sophisticated and respected medical enterprises in the world, dishonored itself and raised profound and persisting questions about the nature, strength, and relevance of the medical ethos and the relationship between medicine and the policies and programs of the state. Efforts to examine the history of German medicine under National Socialism are increasing in scale and number and involve German scholars to an important and expanding extent. Today, many bioethical issues, based on an increasingly sophisticated science and technology, confront medicine. A major lesson from the Nazi era is the fundamental ethical basis of medicine and the importance of an informed, concerned, and engaged profession.
