Nuremberg Code Undermined - Quareness Series 191st "Lecture".
A question I've pondered for quite a while now is how almost a whole society can come to feel contempt for the lives of other human beings e.g. during the Holocaust time. The prevalence of censorship, defamation, black propaganda, repression or even dictatorship alone doesn't seem enough for something of such proportion to take root. An essential condition appears to be the presence of a totalitarian state of affairs where the population is in harmony with dictatorial government which needs mass collaboration in denouncing scapegoats and not really
caring about the fundamental evil involved.
An article by Australian researchers from RMIT University in Melbourne entitled "Extraordinary curtailment of massive typhus epidemic in the Warsaw Ghetto" was published in the journal Science Advances during 2020. The study sets out to explain how the disease (which killed between 10% and 40% of those infected) was controlled in the ghetto...a small densely populated walled off area housing 400,000 people in 1940. Whilst the study focuses on actions internal to the ghetto such as social distancing and combs used to fight lice, it does make some reference to external perspectives e.g. that of the Nazis who then regarded the Warsaw Ghetto as a lockdown to contain the typhus epidemic. Germany in the 1930s and 40s was greatly concerned about public health because of the large losses of soldiers to typhus during World War 1...and per the study this cultivated something of an obsession with infectious diseases. Simultaneously it seems a scientific consensus emerged that Jews were the disease carriers and to protect the population in general from what was then seen as a pandemic, ghetto walls were built as a public health effort to contain the so called typhus spreaders. In the case of Warsaw the "epidemic wall" was 3 metres high and 18 kilometers long topped with barbed wire and confined the whole local Jewish community (33% of the entire population of the city at that time).
Inevitably due to the crowding of people in a small space, typhus cases increased in the walled off area leading the health authorities to reinforce the already established scientific consensus that "the Jews are overwhelmingly the carriers and disseminators of typhus infection". Sparing no effort to control the pandemic, the Third Reich's then highest public health authority (Dr. Jost Walbaum) went on to insist - "We have one and only one responsibility, that the German people are not infected and endangered by these parasites. For that, any means must be right." - to the enthusiastic approval of other experts (mostly doctors). One of the highest authority figures of the then General Government Hans Frank (another one "following science") subsequently stated that the elimination of 3 million Jews in Poland "was unavoidable for reasons of public health". In hindsight it's perhaps more apparent that when there is a high level of censorship of opposing viewpoints, propaganda and public health authorities taking "protective" action, a fearful population enveloped in a totalitarian mindset can even approve a Holocaust.
Over the past 2-3 years we have witnessed a more recent world wide expert consensus in relation to vaccination against covid-19. Despite the fact of the known research science having already shown these vaccines don't stop infection or transmission and taking them is really for one's own perceived medical benefit rather than that of others, the public message kept insisting that "the vaccine protects both you and the people around you"...repeating an official pseudo scientific consensus. In that way this deception pointed the finger of blame for covid-19 squarely at those who decided to forgo vaccination...sorta reminiscent of that earlier typhus spreading tainting of Jews. It appears that in both cases (Jewish WW 2 ghettos and present day covid-19 "spreaders") most people came to believe they were "following the science" and that those who didn't were anti-social "science deniers". Seems trusting the authorities calling themselves spokesmen for science rather than the science itself, promoted a widespread fear whereby the main ethical agreement in history was effectively revoked.
Shortly after World War 2 ended there was a series of 12 trials held in Nuremberg, Germany aimed at convicting captured Nazi war criminals. The first of these took place between 9th December 1946 and 20th August 1947. The charges brought against the 23 defendants involved (doctors and scientists) included conspiracy to commit war crimes, crimes against humanity and conducting medical experiments without the consent of participants such as those in concentration camps and occupied zones. Of these defendants 7 were acquitted, a further 7 received death sentences and the remaining 9 received jail sentences ranging from 10 years to life imprisonment. And the trial and its outcome gave birth to the Nuremberg Code.
The first (and most essential) item of this internationally agreed ethical code defines the voluntary consent of the human subject as absolutely essential - "This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, over-reaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion." Not much room therein for doubt regarding the necessity for and fundamental right to full information and free unpressured choice Nevertheless our novel covid-19 vaccines and booster jabs aggressively touted as "safe and effective" have been mass deployed (quite often under a considerable degree of duress) when it has been and is impossible to know the long term effects. Hopefully such essentially experimental procedures will not cause too much more harm but as we might say...only a time traveller could truly claim that they are safe.
I'm also hoping it ain't too naive to look forward to a more enlightened moral compass emerging soon after this past 3 year "hiccup".
Sean.
Dean of Quareness.
August, 2023.
RMIT Article link - https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abc0927