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How do healers become killers? How could medical professionals perform heinous experiments on concentration camp victims? The awful truth that the report painstakingly describes is that the medical profession in Germany subscribed to an antisemitic, racist, and eugenics-based ideology towards populations that they deemed to be genetically inferior. In 1933, Nazi Germany introduced a forced sterilisation law, developed with legislation prepared by German physicians. 310 000–350 000 victims underwent sterilisation.

Between 1939 and 1945, at least 230 000 victims were murdered in killing programmes, including 7000–10 000 children in one programme, as well as others in the Aktion T4 programme to euthanise institutionalised people with physical, mental, and developmental disabilities.

The Commission’s report also calls out several myths about the role of physicians during the Nazi period. For example, there were not just a few extreme cases, such as Dr Josef Mengele. Over half of German physicians were members of the Nazi Party. Another myth is that Nazi science was so-called pseudoscience; yet a substantial amount of the medical research conducted in Nazi Germany was based on the scientific method and published in international journals. The report also eliminates the myth that there was little to no Jewish medical professional life in the ghettos. Jewish physicians managed clinical settings and cared for their patients even in dire circumstances.

Why does this dark chapter in medicine have implications for today? The history of Nazi medicine provides well documented examples that can help to develop a professional identity among future health-care professionals. Physicians have “enormous power over the lives of individuals and communities”, we wrote in 2019. Even with the safeguards first put in place with the Nuremberg Code of Ethics to ensure ethical human research following the Holocaust, no amount of oversight will stop all professional misconduct. The leadership of all bioscientific institutions and professional societies is required to ensure that history-informed professional identity formation is seen as an essential element in health education.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(23)02501-1/fulltext

In the Lancet. Telegraphing and softening the truth that’s coming? Not so different—the vaxx sterilized women, killed babies and the infirm, got rid of healthy elders...