Significance
The Nuremberg Code as a Foundation
The standards set in the Nuremberg Code in 1947 as a result of the Nazi Doctors’ trial became the basis of today’s bioethics and world human rights. Although the Nuremberg Code has not been passed as law or adopted by any professional medical group, its principles served as the foundation for many human rights organizations and countries’ biomedical research policies. The World Health Organization, United Nations’ UDHR, and the United States’ National Research Act all incorporate basic ethic principles found within the ten doctrines in the Nuremberg Codes.
Please click on the logos below to view the organizations' research policies, constitution or laws.
Human Study Guidelines
One of the significant outcomes from the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial that is important today is how human studies are conducted. All human studies must be approved by institutional review boards which determines if a study is good for advancing human health, safe for the subject, and making sure the study remains ethical.
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Informed Consent
After presented with the evidence of the horrible experiments performed on human subjects without permission by Nazi doctors and scientists, the judges knew that the first and most important principle to be presented should be that of informed consent. In the past there was an assumed trust patients put in their doctors; a responsibility a doctor had, just by taking the Hippocratic Oath and vowing "to do no harm." After World War II, some of the patient/doctor relationship was damaged. With the introduction of informed consent, first at Nuremberg, then almost standard in all medical and bioethics research guidelines, the relationship is healing. Certainly without the introduction of informed consent, we might be at risk of not being informed of medical procedures and experiments. Today, it is the doctor's responsibility to inform a patient of all known risks before a medical/dental procedure or an experimental trial. It is also the right of a patient to ask questions and talk with the doctor or scientist before signing an informed consent form. Years after the Nuremberg Trials, the Nuremberg Code continues to define the rights of patients and responsibilities of physicians.