Ludwik Fleck: On Medical Experiments on Human Beings

Ilana Löwy (1)

1 CERMES3 - UMR 8211 / U988 / UM 7 - CERMES3 - Centre de recherche Médecine, sciences, santé, santé mentale, société

Ludwik Fleck’s article, ‘On medical experiments on human beings’ was published in 1948 in the main Polish medical journal; it was destined for general practitioners. Fleck was prisoner in the concentration camp Buchenwald, where he witnessed Nazi murderous ‘experiments’ on the camp’s imamates; he testified about these experiments in the Nuremberg Trial of Nazi doctors. This article, and Tadeusz Kielanowski’s comment on Fleck text, stress, however, that an exclusive focus on the – hopefully rare – criminal activities of doctors may be misleading. It is important to prevent the numerous ethical transgressions of ‘normal’ medical science and routine clinical practice.

Domaines: Sciences de l'Homme et Société

Ilana Löwy. Ludwik Fleck: On Medical Experiments on Human Beings. Science, Technology, and Human Values, 2016, 41 (3), pp.534-546. ⟨10.1177/0162243915610004⟩. ⟨hal-03479178⟩