Language:
Hebrew
Year of publication:
2012
Titel der Quelle:
תיאוריה וביקורת; במה ישראלית
Angaben zur Quelle:
40 (2012) 213-239
Keywords:
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Influence
;
National socialism Philosophy
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Jews Medicine
;
Judaism and science
;
Science
;
Technology
Abstract:
Our article analyzes from a critical perspective how the medical profession has responded to Nazi medical crimes. We focus on bioethics discourses and practices in the United States, Israel and Germany, thus presenting the perspectives of the victors, the victims and the defeated, while making possible a broader historical view of the construction of the emerging discipline of bioethics after World War II.We investigate the possibility of a continuum between Nazi and “normal” medicine. That is, we consider whether bioethics developed after World War II from the recognition that there is a connection between Nazi medicine and medicine in general, or whether it developed from the universal rejection of such a connection. We argue that for many decades after World War II most of the medical profession differentiated between Nazi medical crimes and “normal” medical activities. This demarcation enabled the medical profession to ignore problematic medical practices, such as the use of captive populations (for example, prisoners or hospitalized mentally ill patients) in medical research, and to blur the distinction between research and clinical practices. Even when criticism was leveled at the medical profession by jurists and social scientists in the 1960s, the lessons that could have been drawn from Nazi medical practices were usually ignored.Our article is based on the assumption that in order to better understand the construction of bioethics we need to broaden the common bioethical perspective, usually presented as universal and positivist, and base our analysis on historical, social, economic and political considerations. By understanding the development of the bioethics discourse and its relation to the history of medicine, including Nazi medicine, we can create an opportunity for a more reflective analysis of the discourses of both medicine and bioethics.
URL:
אתר את הפרסום בקטלוג המאוחד של ספריות ישראל
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