It is love month and it is only fitting way to reflect upon one of the virtues of a doctor, love for humanity.
Compassion runs in the blood of doctors. It is innate. The reason kids want to become a doctor is to help the sick. At an early age, doctors are already compassionate for the other person's well-being. Simply, loving your neighbor. The Hippocratic Oath reminds us that. Even in research, doctors must love their patients - human subjects.
But there was a time when the other person's well-being was abused. There was a time when medicine did not show compassion and doctors could only watch helplessly. It was a time of war.
Do you know how to manage hypothermia - if a person's body temperature drops? Do you know how they came to know it?
Doctors made a "Freezing Hypothermia Experiment" in 1941. Here, a cold water immersion experiment was presided over by Professor Ernst Holzlohner and Dr. Sigmund Rascher .They were testing the effect of wearing a Luftwaffe garment to counter hypothermia.
What they did was shocking. One study forced subjects to endure a tank of ice water for up to three hours. Another study placed prisoners naked in the open for several hours with temperatures below freezing. Then, the experimenters assessed different ways of rewarming survivors.
These freezing experiments researched on how long it would take to lower the body temperature to death and how to best resuscitate the frozen victim.
The human subjects were usually stripped naked. Then an insulated probe which measured the drop in the body temperature was inserted into the rectum. Imagine how painful that was. To top it all, the probe was held in place by an expandable metal ring which was adjusted to open inside the rectum to hold the probe firmly in place.
The human subjects were put into an air force uniform, then placed in the vat of cold water and started to freeze. It was learned that most subjects lost consciousness and died when the body temperature dropped to 77 °F (25 °C).
This is not how you show love for your neighbor. Harming others in the name of science is not a virtue of a doctor.
Such cruelty during the war led to the drafting of human research protocols.
Doctors love their neighbor. This is a virtue innate to all doctors. This virtue guides doctors to show compassion to patients and even to those subject to human research.
Compassion runs in the blood of doctors. It is innate. The reason kids want to become a doctor is to help the sick. At an early age, doctors are already compassionate for the other person's well-being. Simply, loving your neighbor. The Hippocratic Oath reminds us that. Even in research, doctors must love their patients - human subjects.
But there was a time when the other person's well-being was abused. There was a time when medicine did not show compassion and doctors could only watch helplessly. It was a time of war.
Do you know how to manage hypothermia - if a person's body temperature drops? Do you know how they came to know it?
Doctors made a "Freezing Hypothermia Experiment" in 1941. Here, a cold water immersion experiment was presided over by Professor Ernst Holzlohner and Dr. Sigmund Rascher .They were testing the effect of wearing a Luftwaffe garment to counter hypothermia.
What they did was shocking. One study forced subjects to endure a tank of ice water for up to three hours. Another study placed prisoners naked in the open for several hours with temperatures below freezing. Then, the experimenters assessed different ways of rewarming survivors.
These freezing experiments researched on how long it would take to lower the body temperature to death and how to best resuscitate the frozen victim.
The human subjects were usually stripped naked. Then an insulated probe which measured the drop in the body temperature was inserted into the rectum. Imagine how painful that was. To top it all, the probe was held in place by an expandable metal ring which was adjusted to open inside the rectum to hold the probe firmly in place.
The human subjects were put into an air force uniform, then placed in the vat of cold water and started to freeze. It was learned that most subjects lost consciousness and died when the body temperature dropped to 77 °F (25 °C).
This is not how you show love for your neighbor. Harming others in the name of science is not a virtue of a doctor.
Such cruelty during the war led to the drafting of human research protocols.
After the WW2,
several codes, declaration and guidelines have been written and set.
•
Nuremberg Code (1947)
•
Universal Declaration of Human
Rights (UN 1948)
•
Declaration of Helsinki (WMA
1964, 1983, 1989, 1996, 2000)
•
International Covenant on Civil
and Political Rights (1966)
•
International Ethical Guidelines
for Biomedical Research Involving Human Subjects (CIOMS 1993, 2002)
•
Council of Europe: Convention on
Human Rights and Biomedicine (1997)
Doctors love their neighbor. This is a virtue innate to all doctors. This virtue guides doctors to show compassion to patients and even to those subject to human research.
