Nuremburg Code

A few times over the years, especially during the height of the Covid-19 Pandemic, people wrote in asking for a discussion about the Nuremburg Code.

This article will be used to provide some context as to what this convention is, the most common sorts of claims that we have been hearing from people about it, and some thoughts on those claims.

What is the Nuremberg Code?

The Nuremberg Code is a set of ethical principles on human experimentation that came from the Nuremberg Trials.

The Nuremberg Trials were a series of 13 military tribunals held between 1945 and 1949 to prosecute prominent leaders of Nazi Germany for WWII and the Holocaust.

These ethical principles outlined what would be considered a permissible medical experiment. Here are all 10 of these principles:

1. The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.

2. The experiment should be such as to yield fruitful results for the good of society, unprocurable by other methods or means of study, and not random and unnecessary in nature.

3. The experiment should be so designed and based on the results of animal experimentation and a knowledge of the natural history of the disease or other problem under study that the anticipated results will justify the performance of the experiment.

4. The experiment should be so conducted as to avoid all unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury.

5. No experiment should be conducted where there is an a priori reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur; except, perhaps, in those experiments where the experimental physicians also serve as subjects.

6. The degree of risk to be taken should never exceed that determined by the humanitarian importance of the problem to be solved by the experiment.

7. Proper preparations should be made and adequate facilities provided to protect the experimental subject against even remote possibilities of injury, disability, or death.

8. The experiment should be conducted only by scientifically qualified persons. The highest degree of skill and care should be required through all stages of the experiment of those who conduct or engage in the experiment.

9. During the course of the experiment the human subject should be at liberty to bring the experiment to an end if he has reached the physical or mental state where continuation of the experiment seems to him to be impossible.

10. During the course of the experiment the scientist in charge must be prepared to terminate the experiment at any stage, if he has probable cause to believe, in the exercise of the good faith, superior skill and careful judgment required of him that a continuation of the experiment is likely to result in injury, disability, or death to the experimental subject.

Here are some of the broad statements we have received about it and some analysis on these statements:

‘Canadian citizens are bound to the Nuremberg Code via military treaty.’

Canada does not recognize the Nuremberg Code formally in any binding domestic law. The Nuremberg Code was used as a blueprint for modern Canadian ethical standards, and it is sometimes cited as a historical reference. There is no existing military treaty that Canada has signed involving it.

‘Violating the Code can result in capital punishment.’

The Code itself does not establish a criminal penalty of capital punishment for its violation. Further, Canada is party to the Second Operation Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Canada abolished the death penalty for all civilian offenses in 1976 and for all military offenses in 1998.

Some will make additional claims that any time a police officer shoots someone in the public this is the administration of capital punishment. This is not correct in a Canadian context.

When an officer fatally shoots someone in the public it is usually (but not always) one of two things:

1. The removal of an imminent threat to public safety, their own life, etc. where the person’s death is an incidental consequence. Example: An officer fatally shoots someone that is actively stabbing babies in a daycare.

2. Murder.

 Exigent circumstances do not equate to Canada legalizing capital punishment.

‘The Covid-19 Vaccine violated the Nuremberg Code, it did not go through normal trials.’

This depends on how one is using the word normal. Covid-19 vaccines went through the standard three phases of clinical trials. Some of these trials happened in parallel, and is was done very quickly. These trials still involved 10,000+ volunteers.

Technically speaking, as no one directly recognizes the Nuremberg Code, this claim is not particularly relevant, but steel manning the position to instead focus on if modern medical ethics were violated: 

Nothing particularly suspicious is apparent about the Covid-19 vaccine trials, they were indicative of a massive amount of resources being pushed into a high priority research program.

As many of these particular questions came from Americans, it is important to note than in late 2020 some vaccines were available under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) and had not received full FDA approval. This is the medical system providing an experimental treatment to the public that they can optionally take before being confident enough for full-approval due to an emergency.

If an individual wants to make an argument that this was not sufficiently communicated and that the public did not sufficiently understand the risk, that could be a different claim, one about a communications failure.

From the perspective of ethics though, the medical system rushed something in an emergency and labelled it as rushed in an emergency, that is fairly transparent and reasonable.

‘The CDC never officially approved the vaccine for use in Canada’

Yes, this is true for two reasons:

1. The CDC does not approve vaccines in Canada, Health Canada does. The CDC is a United States agency. As an additional note, Health Canada is known for being highly risk averse and having significantly higher standards for approval than much of their counterparts across the globe, and Health Canada did approve many different vaccines.

2. The CDC does not even approve vaccines for the United States of America, that is done by the FDA.

Both the country and the appropriate three letter organization are wrong here.

Yes, the Nuremburg Code exists, and yes, it is an interesting ethical principal, but society has evolved since 1949.

 If one has issues with the way Covid-19 was handled, any aspect including the vaccines, then it may be a useful exercise in exploring it. But looking to an 80-year-old ethical framework that no one explicitly follows and then misrepresenting its arguments is not the best way to go about this.

Here’s an alternative, and we can still use the Nuremburg Code if the individual likes using it.

Pick a number from 1-10, lets go with 4 for now:

4. The experiment should be so conducted as to avoid all unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury.

The code does not need to be cited, this ethical principle is fairly intuitive and likely exists within any modern medical ethics framework. Even if not, one could engage with it in good faith and assume that it ought to be regardless.

Find some evidence that this is clearly being violated, the main important operative word being ‘unnecessary’, and then state a claim that can be engaged with.

Now keep in mind that the person who disagrees will likely respond with something like:

There was no practical alternative, it was necessary for the greater good, etc.

Then both parties will possibly disagree on what reasonably constitutes practical, or the greater good, etc.

This will help get to the core of the issue, whichever one is identified, and will likely be far more productive.

Vezina is the CEO of Prepared Canada Corp. and is the author of Continuity 101. He can be reached at info@prepared.ca.