ABSTRACT

Atrocities committed by German medical scientists experimenting on concentration camp inmates and prisoners of war in the 1940s were the grim stimulus for the development of the concept of 'informed consent'. Nazi medical scientists subjected concentration camp inmates and prisoners of war to horrific experimentation during the Second World War. German medical scientists were actively working on 'racial hygiene' practices well before the establishment of the Nazi Party. The Nuremberg Code of 1946 was a pivotal statement of the ethical principles that ought to apply to research involving humans. A recent United States National Academy of Sciences report stated that more than 7,000 Americans die each year as a result of prescription errors. Women in patriarchal societies are particularly vulnerable to exploitation by male medical practitioners. There was a major increase in the number of hysterectomies carried out in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s.