Skeletons in the Closet of Scientific Ethics : An Analysis of Nazi Medicine, Eugenics, and Bias

Abstract

Scientific bias ran rampant throughout the early 1930s and well into the 1940s, virtually unchallenged by anyone. It was finally reeled in by the Nuremberg Trials and the Nuremberg Code, both of which effectively set out guidelines on the ethics of medicine and human experimentation. However even with these safeguards, scientific bias can sometimes rear its ugly head. The Illinois State Penitentiary malaria trials, Project MKUltra and the autism vaccine scandal are a few very prominent cases where scientific ethics were thrown out the window because people and scientists were blinded by bias. The only surefire way to eliminate bias in the scientific community is through unbiased education. It was bias education of the public by eugenicists that led to negative eugenics. It was a shift in politics that allowed negative eugenics to flourish and become a reality. It was people like Mengele who took advantage of an ethically broken system to perform bias experiments. Together these led to an event that caused the loss of millions of Jews and eventually created a new system that would work to prevent that from happening again. Events like the eugenics and racial hygiene movements can be used as educational tools to prevent more breaking of the ethical line. Lest we forget. Scientific bias is the largest corruption in the scientific community. Bias can easily cloud a scientist's mind and erase ethical lines. Unchallenged scientific bias led to the eugenics movement, justifying the privileged elite's belief that they were superior to all other peoples. The eugenics movement exemplifies the correlation between biased education and radical science it produces, allowing itself to be owned by corrupt political powers. Bias clouded the minds and moral compasses of Nazi scientists, driving them to execute millions of 'unworthy of lives' while using other oppressed groups of people to test highly lethal medicine. Scientific bias only hinders a community by brings about destruction, loss, and a distrust of science.