The Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial: 60 Years Later

Boston University’s School of Law and School of Public Health are co-sponsoring the university’s 3rd annual health law program conference, which will be held this Friday, March 30. The conference’s topic will be a historical reassessment of the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial. For information on attending, click here; for a complete schedule of the event and list of speakers, click here.

Some of the notable presenters will include:

~ Edmund Pellegrino, Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Medical Ethics at the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at Georgetown University Medical Center, will deliver the keynote address entitled, “On Human Dignity.”

~ Steven Katz, Director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies at Boston University, will give a talk entitled, “Misusing the Holocaust Paradigm in Today’s Culture.”

~ Michael Grodin, Director of the Bioethics and Human Rights Program and Professor of Health Law, Bioethics, Human Rights, Socio-Medical Sciences and Community Medicine and Psychiatry at the Boston University Schools of Public Health and Medicine, will give a talk entitled, “Mad, Bad, or Evil: How Physician Healers Become Perpetrators of Torture, Murder and Genocide.”

~ Fran Miller, Professor of Law at Boston University School of Law (cross appointments at BU’s School of Public Health and School of Management), will give a talk entitled, “The Doctors’ Trial and Contemporary Research and Genetics.”

~ Sue Pauker, Associate Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, will give a talk entitled, “Screening and Eugenics.”

~ George Annas, the Edward R. Utley Professor of Health Law, Chairman of Health Law Department at the Boston University School of Public Health, will give a talk entitled, “The Impact of the Doctors’ Trial on International Law.”

~ Robert Sloane, Associate Professor of Law at Boston University School of Law, will give a talk entitled, “The Challenge of Enforcing International Law on Physicians and Lawyers Who Break It.”

For additional background on the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial, the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law has put together an in-depth website on the topic. It includes copies of the indictments and transcript excerpts from the trial.