ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that human's origins and aims stemmed from the social and professional trajectories of medicine in the history of modern Germany. The Nuremberg Doctors' Trial has significance even beyond the history of Nazi atrocities, the extent and limit of international justice, and the fragility of medical ethics. The invocation of an ethical imperative is a necessary and effective response to the arguments from ethical and cultural relativism, from precedent, and from legal positivism, all of which were advanced by the defense at Nuremberg. The defendants at Nuremberg were at some pains to avoid mentioning any professional or individual allegiance to Nazi racial aims. The prosecution at Nuremberg was forced to concede that there had been precedents for human experimentation. The principal ethical lesson contained in the history of the Doctors' Trial at Nuremberg concerns the dangers of social corporatism. Modern Germany consistently displayed such a corporatist ethic in its political and social organization.
