Évolution du système de santé et de la pratique médicale sous le III e Reich

Whereas numerous States have had a eugenist movement, why did the sole Germany (and Austria) turn what they already called since the end of the 19th century “racial hygiene” into a policy of genocide ? By moving from a curative medicine to the “sanitization” of the society through racial and social hygiene legitimized by the natural sciences. But this move had to be conducted step by step, as early as the spring of 1933. In 1934, Wagner, who had been promoted Chief of the Health of the Reich, drafts the first objectives of the new government in the domain of health : cleaning up the hospitals, the teaching hospitals and the public health service from their jewish and “Marxist” elements, as well as excluding non-Aryans doctors from local health departments.The “health policy” of the Third Reich would have been the acme of the medical ethic’s crisis of the 20th century. The Nuremberg Code was to be the first solution adopted after the war. It constitutes the basis for the fundamental rights for dignity and integrity of human beings as international charters and conventions codified them since 1948. A most concerned profession, medicine would yet progress very slowly in this field. In 1949 only was adopted the first International Code of Medical Ethics, first ethical and legal tool to confront the breathtaking progress of science, in particular of biotechnology and its instrumentalization towards the merchandising of bodies and life

Dignity · Human rights · Humanities · Nazi Germany · Nazism · Political science · Politics · Public health · Sociology · European history and politics · French Historical and Cultural Studies · Law · Medical History and Research · Medicine · Nursing