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Scientific Murder: Human Experimentation in Nazi Germany The Nazi's were infamous for their cruel and unusual experiments on humans. Although they played a small part of Nazi Germany's attempt at racial hygiene, these experiments desecrated and exterminated thousands of humans (Lifton 269). "The Nazi medical experiments of the 1930's and 1940's are the most famous example of recent disregard for ethical conduct " (Polit & Hungler 127). For the sake of science, thousands lost their lives "I have no words. I thought we were human beings. We were living creatures. How could they do things like that?" (Auschwitz survivor as quoted in Lifton 269). Was it really science, or was it murder? After the Nazi's seized power in 1933, patients no longer had protection by law from German scientists. These scientists could use any method of "research or treatment". "Terrible experiments carried out in the concentration camps were symptomatic of this amoral attitude of the German scientific community" (Friedlander 131). Prior to 1933, scientists promoted radical measures in the study of racial science. "Prominent eugenicists-anthropologists, geneticists, psychiatrists-influenced both Nazi ideologues and a generation of scientists and physicians" (Friedlander 123). Literature from these scientists influenced Adolf Hitler and many scientists during the Nazi period (Friedlander 123). Science in Germany quickly adjusted to the ideas of race and eugenics. "The enthusiastic participation of the scientific and medical establishment in the sterilization program was an indication of the fact that its ideology meshed with that of the Nazi movement' (Friedlander 125). The concept of racial hygiene was the foundation of Germany's eugenic and racial policy. State hospital directors and scientists founded institutes and departments for researching heredity. In order for scientist to move up in rank, they were coerced to comply with racial hygiene as prescribed by the regime. "Loyalty to ideology determined access to research grants and job opportunities" (Friedlander 126). Euthanasia became a solution to the problem of the slow process of mass sterilization. German scientists were eager to benefit ... ...wledge in science and medicine" (Caplan 65). The German anthropological and psychiatric scientists trapped themselves with their own mythological beliefs. "Every science at its beginning builds on its own mythological foundations. As it progresses, those parts which can no longer be integrated into the whole are dropped" (Muller-Hill 101). The scientists of the Third Reich proved to be malicious and destructive and "in the last analysis, stupid" (Muller-Hill 101). German scientists proved themselves to be traitors to science as they spilled the blood of innocent victims to consecrate their myth (Muller-Hill 101). Bibliography Caplan, Arthur L. When Medicine Went Mad. Totowa: Humana Press, 1992. Friedlander, Henry. The Origins of Nazi Genicide From Euthanasia to the Final Solution. Chapel Hill: London: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. Lifton, Robert J. The Nazi Doctors. New York: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, 1986. Polit, Denise F., and Bernadette P. Hungler. Essentials of Nursing Research. Philadelphia: New York: Lippencott-Raven, 1997. Muller-Hill, Benno. Murderous Science. Oxford: New York: Tokyo: Oxford University Press, 1988.