Nazi Records

Nazi Records- The origin and use of information

-Understanding the ethical issues about how technical information is obtained helps us consider whether or how we should be communicating the information we deal with

The following questions will be addressed:
Should it make any difference to us as communicators how a particular body of information that we might communicate was obtained?

How are ethics and values reflected in our language and in the format of our technical documents?

Should the uses to which our information will likely be put influence our ethical judgment about the communication of that information?

-We will look at how similar issues surround recent revelations about U.S. research on the effects of radiation on humans in the decades just after World War II
-We will also look at how the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently dealt with these types of issues
-Technical communication deals with two distinguishing figures of mankind: language and the sense of ethical responsibility
-The “scientific” research on prisoners is widely understood as completely lacking genuine scientific purpose or validity
-The point of the examples is to show that some of the values embedded in the scientific frame of mind can be carried to extremes-with terrible consequences
-Emotional disengagement of the researcher from the research subject, the power and control that differentiate between them, and the superiority of the researcher in which the subject is purposefully kept in the dark about what is going on-we should be careful not to carry these values to extremes
-Technical communicators and the technical documents we produce are not as ethically neutral as we might think-thinking of information as factual knowledge that exists apart form values, politics, and ethics is not accurate, the information has to be accurate and obtained correctly.
-Nazi “medical” research was not science for the sake of science but as a means to accomplish the end of racial persecution and extermination, it was not scientific and technological values at work but racism instead
-Examining how information originated allows us to fully understand all its ethical dimensions

Origination, Dissemination, and Use of Information
-This section briefly reviews the Nazi regime in its racism, its relation to science and medicine, and its trial for crimes against humanity
-The purpose of this is to show that ethical considerations apply not only to the content of the document but also to how the content was obtained and how it will be used
-Objectivism (the excessive and inappropriate treatment of people as objects), impersonalness, and emotional disengagement are the key values in Nazi medical science
-Critics consider these values problematic and cause for serious concern

Nazi Past
-Most of the so-called scientific research was intended to support the Nazi war effort by showing the limits of human endurance (concentration and death camps)
-In our universities today, all scientific research involving people as research subjects has to be reviewed by “human subjects” panels to prevent anything like the Nazi research from happening again

Controversy in the Present
-In recent years, an outcry about Nazi “scientific” information and other information collected unethically has arisen about medical specimens of human organs
-Scandals have arisen over human anatomical samples used in medical education
-Tissue specimens, and skeletons used at several prominent German medical schools came from Nazi prison and death camps
-These specimens likely came from the bodies of deceased Jews who didn’t say whether their bodies could be used or not
-Israelis protested on the circumstances under which the specimens were obtained saying there was no informed consent, no possibility of choosing otherwise, no legitimate reason for the execution, no possibility of protest-nothing we consider basic human rights applied in these cases
-The means by which the samples were obtained should prevent them from being used for any purpose

“Research” Information
-Recently there was interest that a case about Nazi hypothermia experiments could be used to improve survival equipment but others opposed the use of this information because of the suffering and persecution through which it was obtained.
-One side obviously argues that the information should never be used but the other side argues that the information should be used precisely in order to give some purpose to the victim’s suffering as well as to relieve the suffering of those who might benefit from the information
-the hypothermia research was totally unscientific
-The New England Journal of Medicine has taken the position that it will not publish reports of unethical research, regardless of their scientific merit

Values in Nazi Medical “Science”

Traditional View
-Many of these historical treatments take a sociological perspective
-The underemployment of medical school graduates, the depressed economy, and the need for the Nazi regime to legitimate it racial policies were all important factors at work to medicalize the mistreatment of prisoners and patients.
-The healer became the killer and healing became killing
-Rather than accept technical facts and factual statements as absolutely true, we should be aware of how readily they can be transformed by social circumstances
-In the Nazi regime, euthanasia was reinterpreted as putting someone to death in a way that was perceived as human and on the basis of his or her unworthiness to live
-Euthanasia is a “happy death” because it isn’t violent
-“Special Treatment” referred to medical killing, special in the sense of lying outside the mainstream of medicine

Nazi Antiscience

-These horrible activities done in the name of medical science are explained on the basis of the inhumaneness and unethicalness of science itself
-As a result the actions described show science to be essentially unethical and an enemy of basic human values
-Jacques Ellul and Langdon Winner – ethical critics concerned about the apparent indifference of science and technology to traditional values
-When speaking of the Nazi pseudoresearch, science and technology are at best indifferent or oppose conventional human values
-Harrington states that the Nazi regime operated in a state of mind that amounted to not science but antiscience
-The new “holistic” science would yield a new world order in which mankind would be purer, stronger, better, and happier.
-The sick should die, and the strong and healthy should prevail and flourish, according to this perspective, and it was the duty of the new “science” to make the strong, healthy, and dominant even more so.

Research in the United States

-The means by which information and knowledge is obtained can greatly affect its validity and usability
-Scientific knowledge is valuable in its own right for its own sake
-Scientific knowledge can be tainted by the means by which it is obtained even when human suffering is not involved-suffering of animals
-Kant believed that the categorical imperative of ethics applies not only to humans but also to any and all beings capable of reasoned thought

Nazi Technical Memorandum

-Steven Katz – our modern society is heavily influenced by science and technology
-Technological values such as expediency and efficiency have come to completely dominate our society and reshape its entire value system
-As a result, instead of being only a means to pursue worthwhile social goals, technology becomes a goal or end in itself
-We need to consider the social, political, and cultural context in which a document appears.
-For Nazis, the distinction between means and ends became so blurred that what was technically possible came to be sought almost for its own sake – doing something just because you can
Graphical Images

-Another way that underlying values found expression in technical and scientific information and documents was through Nazi race laws
-Aimed at ensuing the purity of the “Aryan” race
-One of the motives behind anti-semitic laws that created the hatred of Jews was the science of superiority of one race over all others
-Led to social problems in society
-Science was then made to serve politics
-Education and research in biological and medical areas came to be controlled by political leaders who would allow only politically correct theories to be taught and practiced and who would not tolerate opposition

Ethical Appraisal

Aristotle – his perspective based on virtue and cultivated attitudes would ethically condemn the Nazi regime
Kant – we should treat all other people as we would wish they would treat us under the same universal ethical rules so the persecution and execution of any other people, such as the Nazi regime would be unethical
Utilitarianism – A Utilitarian theorist would not likely approve of the Nazi regime but would be in favor of communicating and using the information
Feminist and Ethics of Care – would find the Nazi regime and its activities completely unethical, they disapprove of Authoritarianism, the Nazis didn’t care about their victims and treated them as objects but a caring concern for those now living would require us to communicate and use this information

-The manner in which information is communicated has significant ethical implications that includes not only the language but also the absence of language
-As you can see scientific investigations can at times be carried to extremes with devastating consequences.