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Reproduction Then and Now: Learning from the Past

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Abstract

Doctors during the National Socialist regime violated their professional ethics and disregarded basic human rights, especially in reproductive medicine in general and abortion in particular. Using reproductive medicine during the Third Reich as a case study, I show how the history of the medical crimes has influenced and affected reproductive policies and research in modern Israel and in Germany. New genetic technologies, such as preimplantation diagnosis and embryonic stem cell research, aim to improve human well-being, but this area of human subjects research also poses many fundamental ethical and moral dilemmas that medical professionals must acknowledge and address. The social, cultural, and political conditions of medicine under National Socialism are not exactly analogous to those of contemporary medicine. Nonetheless, studying the Nazi perversions of medical care can facilitate and inform the current discourse on bioethical issues, especially the devastating consequences of physicians abandoning their ethical and professional precepts in the name of science.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Kupat Holim Clalit, Israel, Gan Yoshiya, Emek Hefer, 38850, Israel

    Tessa Chelouche MD (Family Physician)

  2. Rappaport Medical School, Technion, Haifa, Israel

    Tessa Chelouche MD (Family Physician)

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  1. Tessa Chelouche MD
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Correspondence to Tessa Chelouche MD .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Baylor College of Medicine, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston School of Nursing, Center for Medicine after the Holocaust, Houston, Texas, USA

    Sheldon Rubenfeld

  2. The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston School of Nursing, Houston, Texas, USA

    Susan Benedict

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Chelouche, T. (2014). Reproduction Then and Now: Learning from the Past. In: Rubenfeld, S., Benedict, S. (eds) Human Subjects Research after the Holocaust. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05702-6_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05702-6_18

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-05701-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-05702-6

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