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Lessons still need to be learned from Nuremberg

BMJ 1996; 313 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.313.7070.1422a (Published 07 December 1996) Cite this as: BMJ 1996;313:1422

Fascist comparisons should not be used when discussing social issues such as abortion or euthanasia as this only tends to trivialise the enormity and atrocity of what Nazi doctors did, according to a leading medical ethicist.

Dr Michael Grodin, professor of medical ethics at Boston University said that he regrets that human experimentation issues, although central to the Nuremberg trials, tended to overshadow the broader issues of sterilisation, euthanasia, and eugenics that played a major part in German doctors' complicity in state ideology.

A speaker at a conference on the Nuremberg code and …

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