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Nurses and Human Subjects Research during the Third Reich and Now

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Human Subjects Research after the Holocaust

Abstract

While the roles of nurses in the crimes of National Socialism have not been as well studied as the roles of physicians, nurses both carried out the orders of physicians to kill their patients and personally selected and killed patients in the “euthanasia” programs. Nurses also participated in human subjects research in the concentration camps. For example, prisoner-nurses were assistants to Drs. Horst Schumann and Carl Clauberg in their sterilization experiments in Auschwitz. Interviews with two of these assistants and one subject of the experiments form the basis for the first part of this chapter. Nurses employed by the SS (Schutzstaffel) assisted with the wound infection experiments and pharmaceutical studies at Ravensbrück concentration camp. Several were tried after the war and were hanged or sentenced to prison.

The expanding roles of nurses in contemporary medical research also are discussed. Nurses frequently are the ones who fully explain the risks and benefits of studies and, therefore, often influence whether the prospective subjects participate. In some cases, nurses serve as principal investigators of their own studies, as did Eva Justin, one of the first nurses with a PhD, who studied half-Romani children in the 1940s before they were deported to Auschwitz.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston School of Nursing, 6901 Bertner Ave., Houston, TX, 77030, USA

    Susan Benedict CRNA, PhD, FAAN (Assistant Dean and Department Chair: Acute and Continuing Care; Professor and Director of Global Health; Co-director Campus-wide Program in Interprofessional Ethics) & Cathy Rozmus RN, PhD (PARTNERS Professor; Associate Dean for Academic Affairs; Assistant Vice President for Institutional Assessment and Enhancement)

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  1. Susan Benedict CRNA, PhD, FAAN
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  2. Cathy Rozmus RN, PhD
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Correspondence to Susan Benedict CRNA, PhD, FAAN .

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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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Benedict, S., Rozmus, C. (2014). Nurses and Human Subjects Research during the Third Reich and Now. In: Rubenfeld, S., Benedict, S. (eds) Human Subjects Research after the Holocaust. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05702-6_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05702-6_7

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-05701-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-05702-6

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