Fifty years after the Nuremberg medical trial there remain many unanswered questions about the role of the German medical profession during the Third Reich. Other than the question of human experimentation, important ethical challenges arising from medicine in Nazi Germany which have continuing relevance were not addressed at Nuremberg. The underlying moral question is that of the exercise of professional power and its impact on vulnerable people seeking medical care. Sensitisation to the obligations of professional power may be achieved by an annual commemoration and lament to the memory of the victims of medical abuse which would serve as a recurring reminder of the physician's vulnerability and fallibility.

The Nuremberg medical trial saw the prosecution of a few people who exploited the opportunities when medical science defined some human beings as “subhuman” and therefore qualified as subjects for inhuman medical experiments. Absent from the dock were the leaders of the medical profession of the Third Reich, in particular the academic and scientific elite. It was this elite who legitimised the devaluation of human life and set the stage for medical crimes—crimes in which leading academics and scientists were either principals or accomplices. Of the 23 defendants at the Nuremberg medical trial, only Gerhard Rose (sentenced to life imprisonment) and Paul Rostock (acquitted) were internationally recognised scientists and academics (fig 1).1 2 3