Reiner Fuellmich on politicians ignoring the Nuremberg Code

2 Comments / 2 Comments

1. @Adam
   I wrote on the Nuremberg Code several months back, so let me cite the relevant portion of that passage here:

   Regarding the Nuremberg Code(NC), it was the basis of a legal judgement employed on the world stage at the end of WWII. It is fair to say that it was not, in and of itself, binding in the US and elsewhere at the time, but its principles have come to be inculcated into the binding set of rules known as Common Law and the the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki of 1964, as well as various legal codes around the world as the basis of bioethics and medical experimentation.

   The NC is not perfect, has several known issues including various loopholes. It’s basis goes back to both the Prussian Berlin Code of 1900 and the German Guidelines for Human Experimentation of 1931. There are significant changes from these codes, but the principles of the NC has been accepted in the US and many nations around the world to one degree or another.

   Specifically within the US, the code’s importance and relevance has been cited in various US court rulings. Among these are included a ruling over the use of LSD in mind control experiments by the CIA in 2013, US v. Stanley, 483 YS 669 (1987), where it was cited in the dissenting opinion that

   The medical trials at Nuremberg in 1947 deeply impressed upon the world that experimentation with unknowing human subjects is morally and legally unacceptable. The United States Military Tribunal established the Nuremberg Code as a standard against which applies to all citizens— soldiers as well as civilians.”

   More pivotal than this, though, it went on to state that

   “Its first principle was: “The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential”.

   https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/483/669/

   In 2001, there was a major victory out of an Appeals Court decision in Grimes / Higgins v Kennedy Krieger Institute where they ruled that the Nuremberg Code should be used as the legal standard of juris prudence regarding medical research:

   Of special interest to this Court, the Nuremberg Code, at least in significant part, was the result of legal thought and legal principles, as opposed to medical or scientific principles, and thus should be the preferred standard for assessing the legality of scientific research on human subjects

   https://caselaw.findlaw.com/md-court-of-appeals/1236870.html

   This was reinforced in a ruling against Pfizer in 2009 before the Appeals Court, Rabi Abdullahi, et al. v. Pfizer, Inc., 562 F.3d (2d Cir. 2009), where it cited that NC

   was the universally accepted norm in customary international law regarding nonconsensual medical experimentation

   and further noted that

   Nuremberg was based on enduring [legal] principles and not on temporary political expedients, and this fundamental point is apparent from the reaffirmation of the Nuremberg principles in Control Council Law No. 10, and their application and refinement in the 12 judgments rendered under that law during the 3-year period, 1947 to 1949.

   This is in no way an exhaustive list of cases in which NC is cited in briefs or rulings, but these are among the more significant rulings related to medical research.

   NC also forms the basis for bioethics and medical research.

   As such, the NC is specifically referenced in the British Medical Journal in 1996
   and, though not specifically cited, its tenets are largely included in The Helsinki Declaration of the World Medical Association in 1964, the U.S. National Research Act in 1974, the Belmont Report of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1979, and the Common Rule of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 1991.

2. THere never was a “Nuremberg Code.” The only code relevant to any future trial for “crimes against humanity” is the Rome statutes. But the United States, Russia and Israel never signed this treaty.