ABSTRACT

The acknowledgement of acts protecting the principles of medical ethics at the time is important as there were examples of active, daily resistance by doctors in the situations studied. Probably, the events under the military dictatorships heightened awareness of the ethical fragility of medical practice; it is also likely that the non-con- frontationality that arose at that time still affects even the representatives of quite similar views of ethics in medicine. Dr. Guido Diaz Paci’s opinion on torture, which he expressed to the special commission of the department of ethics of the Doctors’ Association of Chile, is especially relevant as he was responsible for political prisoners for over six years as a military doctor. The spirit of the Nuremberg Code thus no longer constitutes a distant model to emulate in investigating the interaction between medicine and human rights under military dictatorships in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. Military doctors are mainly responsible for the violations against human rights in South America.