Bioethics and the Holocaust: Reflecting on the Past to Protect the Future

As part of FIT’s annual Holocaust commemoration, Dr. Stacy Gallin, director of the Center for Human Dignity in Bioethics, Medicine, and Health at Misericordia University, will give a lecture titled “Bioethics and the Holocaust: Reflecting on the Past to Protect the Future.”

This lecture will focus on the abrogation of biomedical ethics in World War II Germany, demonstrating how the Holocaust is a unique example of medically sanctioned genocide. The biomedical ethical considerations brought to light as a result of the alliance between medicine and politics remain relevant for current medical and scientific practice, health care policy, and human rights endeavors.  Eugenics, disability studies, beginning and end-of-life care and human subject experimentation are all topics that are vital to the history as well as the future of bioethics. Understanding the pivotal role played by science and medicine in the labeling, persecution, and eventual mass murder of those deemed “unfit” is essential to preventing other instances of human rights abuses in modern society.