Medical research and practice under Germany's National Socialist regime (1933–1945) has come to serve as an archetype for the immoral uses to which science and technology can be applied. In many instances appeals to science were used to justify evil actions, and independent reflection failed to criticize unethical research protocols and medical interventions. Without diminishing the horrors that resulted, it is nevertheless important to place such actions in context in order not to so distance them that they offer no lessons from which others might learn.

Social Context

Genetics and related eugenic claims were at the heart of Nazi racial ideology that ultimately led to genocide in Europe during World War II. Although the study and application of eugenics did not begin with National Socialism, it was in Nazi Germany that eugenics became a central component of state policy. The same academic and research institutions that were...