From the Dead to the Living: Ethical Transgressions in Anatomical Research in National Socialism

Lunch provided at NOON. Talk begins at 12:10 pm. The use of bodies of executed persons was well established as an accepted practice in German anatomy before 1933. When National Socialism legislation led to an exponential increase in executions, anatomists of all political convictions seized the new "research opportunities" eagerly. In the war years, an apparent shift in the traditional paradigm of anatomy--i.e. knowledge gain through work with the dead human body--became evident in the thinking of a few anatomists. They started to work with the "future dead" in medical experiments on prisoners who were subsequently murdered. The relevance of this history for modern anatomy will be discussed.Sabine Hildebrandt, MD is an assistant professor in the department of general pediatrics at Boston Children's Hospital and a lecturer on global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School. Her research interests are the history and ethics of anatomy, and specifically the history of anatomy in National Socialist Germany, a field in which she is an internationally recognized expert. Dr. Hildebrandt will give a related lecture, The Role of Anatomists in the Destruction of Victims of National Socialism, on Monday, March 23, 5:30pm, Rm. 217, Perkins Library. Both talks are co-sponsored by the History of Medicine Collections in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library.