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had ceased to belong to the organizations
enumerated in the preceding paragraph prior to 1 September 1939."
THE PROOF AS TO WAR CRIMES
AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
Judged by any standard of proof the record clearly shows the
commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity substantially as alleged
in counts two and three of the indictment. Beginning with the outbreak of World
War II criminal medical experiments on non-German nationals, both prisoners of
war and civilians, including Jews and "asocial" persons, were carried
out on a large scale in Germany and the occupied countries. These experiments
were not the isolated and casual acts of individual doctors and scientists
working solely on their own responsibility, but were the product of coordinated
policy-making and planning at high governmental, military, and Nazi Party
levels, conducted as an integral part of the total war effort. They were
ordered, sanctioned, permitted, or approved by persons in positions of
authority who under all principles of law were under the duty to know about
these things and to take steps to terminate or prevent them.
PERMISSIBLE MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS
The great weight of the evidence before us is to the effect
that certain types of medical experiments on human beings, when kept within
reasonably well-defined bounds, conform to the ethics of the medical profession
generally. The protagonists of the practice of human experimentation justify
their views on the basis that such experiments yield results for the good of
society that are unprocurable by other methods or means of study. All agree,
however, that certain basic principles must be observed in order to satisfy
moral, ethical and legal concepts:
1. The voluntary consent of the human subject is 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; and should have sufficient
knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as
to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision. This latter
element requires that before the acceptance of an affirmative decision by the
experimental subject there should
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