The Significance of the Nuremberg Code: The Universal Right of Informed Consent to Medical Interventions

Summary:

1. . . . Schloendorff v. Society of New York Hospital 105 N.E. 92, 93 N.Y. (1914) Justice Benjamin Cardozo . . . :

Every human being of adult years and sound mind has a right to determine what shall be done with his own body; and a surgeon who performs an operation without his patient’s consent commits an assault for which he is liable in damages.

2. . . . The 1947 Nuremberg Code is the most important legal document in the history of medical research ethics. It established 10 foundational principles of ethical clinical research.

The first and foremost principle is unequivocal:

“The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential”.

It prohibits research to be conducted on human beings without the informed consent of the individual.

. . .

The Nuremberg Code provides legal justification to litigate violations of informed consent.

Under the Nuremberg Code, responsibility for violations of informed consent rests upon individual doctors, government officials – and their aiders and abettors – each of who can be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. . . .

3. In the wake of public disclosure of the U. S. government Tuskegee Syphilis experiment (1932-1972), the government convened the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. The Commission issued The Belmont Report: Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research (1979). . . .

4. The first US Supreme Court decision in which the Nuremberg Code was invoked was in 1987. The plaintiff was a Sergeant in the US Army who sought compensation — having been a victim in a covert CIA-sponsored, LSD mind-control experiment.
US v. Stanley, 483 YS 669 (1987) . . .

5. In 1994, the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments was tasked with investigating and documenting the scope of unethical US government human radiation experiments. The (ACHRE) Report (1995) includes CIA mind-control experiments and devotes two chapters to the Nuremberg Code, and describes the growing influence that the Nuremberg Doctors Trial and the Nuremberg Code had on the American medical establishment. . . .

6. In 2001, the Maryland Court of Appeal explicitly cited the Nuremberg Code as a source of legally enforceable ethical standards in the case against the Kennedy Krieger Institute.

The case involved a government lead abatement experiment that exposed inner city Black toddlers to lead paint. . . . ..

7. In 2009, the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals in the Southern District of New York cited the Nuremberg Code as:

“the universally accepted norm in customary international law regarding nonconsensual medical experimentation.”

The case involved Pfizer which conducted an unapproved, trial of its experimental antibiotic, Trovan on children in Nigeria. The court found Pfizer guilty.

Rabi Abdullahi, et al. v. Pfizer, Inc., 562 F.3d (2d Cir. 2009)

“Among the nonconsensual experiments that the tribunal cited as a basis for their convictions were the testing of drugs for immunization against malaria, epidemic jaundice, typhus, smallpox and cholera. Seven of the convicted doctors were sentenced to death and the remaining eight were sentenced to varying terms of imprisonment. . . .

9. On March 1st Isaac Legaretta, a New Mexico Detention Center Officer filed the first US Lawsuit Over Mandatory Covid Vaccines. . . .

His attorney Ana Garner told Bloomberg News: “You can’t be forced to be a human guinea pig. We have the right to bodily integrity.”

10. On March 7th an Israeli citizens group filed a a petition to the International Criminal Court charging the Israeli Government with violating the Nuremberg Code with its mandatory Vaccination policy . . .

On March 19th a group of researchers from Norway have filed a lawsuit charging the Norwegian government corona policy is a Crime Against Humanity. under the leadership of Dr. Reiner Fuellmich and his team of investigators and lawyers. Read the English translation here . . . .

Another article: Vaccination and the Issue of “Voluntary Consent”. The Rights of Individuals to Control their Bodies

. . . Although the Nuremberg Code specifically addressed the human right for human beings to give their voluntary informed consent to participate in scientific experiments, the First Principle of the Nuremberg Code has become an ethical standard for allowing patients to give their voluntary consent to engage in medical interventions that carry a risk of harm.

The first principle of the Nuremberg Code includes the following language:

“The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent, should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision…..”

. . .

Additional Information:
Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights: “Any preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic medical intervention is only to be carried out with the prior, free and informed consent of the person concerned . . . ” http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=31058&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html