NAZI WAR CRIMES OF A MEDICAL NATURE
In order to ensure the supremacy of the Aryan race, the Nazi Party in Germany desired to find a secret way of sterilizing large populations.  Three experiments involving sterilization were in progress when World War II ended in 1945.
1.   Dried plant juice was put into food that was fed to concentration camp populations.  This was supposed to sterilize women predominantly.
2.    Intra-uterine injections of a silver nitrate solution were given to women, without their consent, during routine physical examinations.
3.    Men stood at a counter to complete forms while being exposed, without their knowledge, to sterilizing doses of X-radiation.

In addition to sterilization experiments, Nazi physician/researchers were under great pressure to develop an effective vaccine for typhus fever to administer to German troops.   At Buchenwald concentration camp, experiments were conducted in which prisoners were administered vaccine (or placebo) and then injected with blood from patients with typhus fever.  Between 1942 and 1943, about 729 people were subjected to such experiments and 154 died.  In addition, other prisoners served as a “passage group.”  In order to keep the virus alive and virulent, the researchers would inject the virus into prisoners.  When these people developed the acute illness, their blood was removed and injected into other prisoners.

The horrors of the preceding and many other “experiments,” were exposed during and after World War II.  The people who conducted these experiments were tried separately from other Nazi war criminals because of their professional status as physicians and the atrocious nature of their crimes.

During the trial at Nuremberg, fundamental ethical principles for the conduct of research involving humans were codifies into the Nuremberg Code which sets forth ten conditions that must be met before research involving humans is ethically permissible (e.g., the need for voluntary informed consent of subjects, a scientifically valid research design that could provide fruitful results for the good of society). The Nuremberg Code became the first international standard for the conduct of research.

To date, little use has been made of the data generated from the Nazi experiments.  There is ongoing discussion in scientific and ethics communities concerning whether it is ethically permissible to use or publish the data.