Nuremberg Trials

1. Entity type Lemma
2. Original titleНюрнбергский процесс
3. Language term Russian
4. lemma author Asliturk, Miriam
5. lemma category Ethics - Scientific theories and disciplines > Medicine - Scientific theories and disciplines > Biology
6. Publication date 19-05-2018
7. lemma work Нюрнбергский процесс
8. lemma manifestations Церковь и Биоэтика: Церковно-общественный совет по биомедицинской этике при Московской Патриархии.
9. Keywords bioethics - embryonic - new technologies - Medical technologies - abortion - ethics - Experiment - human experiment
10. Url Click Here
11. Citations
    1. <p>Нюрнбергский процесс (2007). <em>Церковь и Биоэтика: Церковно-общественный совет по биомедицинской этике при Московской Патриархии</em>. Retrieved from: <a href="http://bioethics.orthodoxy.ru/biblioteka/khristianstvo-i-meditsina/239-">http://bioethics.orthodoxy.ru/biblioteka/khristianstvo-i-meditsina/239-</a> </p>
12. Lemma body

    1. This article is posted on a Church site dedicated to issues of bioethics. The article questions the objectivity of science. Quoting Nazi medical experiments on humans as well as some cases of medical experimentation in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union of the 1920s as examples, the author points out that science is always dependent on humans who perform it. Scientific problems are thus always linked to moral problems and ethics.

       Up until the 20^th century science had relied on Christian values, such as the sanctity of life, but science was starting to make great progress and at the same time began resorting to numerous unethical practices. Scientists invented weapons of mass destruction and developed unethical biomedical technologies (such as the destruction of reserve zygotes during the artificial insemination procedure; prenatal diagnosis that encourages abortions; and the transformation of human embryos into pharmaceutical materials).

       The article argues that Christianity is not against science, but against what St. Basil the Great and Fyodor Dostoevsky defined as “semi-science" – science denying moral values. The author calls for an ethics-centred approach as far as biomedical technologies are concerned, pointing out that the Nuremberg trials of sixty years ago highlighted the problem of ethics in science and medicine. The issue was further fixed in the "Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Dignity in Connection with the Use of Biology and Medicine" signed in 1996 by more than 20 states - members of the European Council. The author underlines that Russia has not yet joined the Convention.