Medical Torture

The earliest known text about medical ethics (5th century BC, pre-dates the Hippocratic Oath)

The Hippocratic Oath is an oath taken by physicians where they pledge to take care of patients and follow certain ethical guidelines. People often paraphrase lines of the Hippocratic oath into "First, do no harm" although that is not actually part of the oath.

During the Sino-Japanese War, the medical personnel who worked in Unit 731, a biological and Chemical research center in Japan, deliberately performed human experimentation on prisoners of war in inhumane and cruel ways. They deliberately infected, dissected, and otherwise tortured Japanese prisoners of war in the name of advancing medicine.

Human rights abuses were committed by the Nazis during the second world war. Doctors would torture the prisoners of war, mostly those thought to be "ethnically impure"and harvest the information to better prepare the German army.

Nazi doctors involved in human experimentation were tried by an international court in Nuremberg, Most were found guilty and sent to death.

The establishment of a 10-point code after the Nuremberg trials which is meant to prevent abuse of subjects for human experimentation.

Post WWII, representatives of all the nations involved got together and negotiated the terms of fair treatment for prisoners of war and defined basic rights and protection for civilians as well as the wounded.

UN General assembly made a list of inalienable human rights after WWII

The Author Anthony Burgess wrote the book A Clockwork Orange after he visited the USSR and it was inspired by the culture of young Russian street thugs. The book gained international fame after the 1971 movie adaptation directed by Stanley Kubrick. The relevance of this novel to medical torture is that when the protagonist Alex, a sadistic thug, is thrown into jail, he is selected to be a test subject for a new form of behavioral correction. As part of this treatment, shots are administered to him and he is forced to watch filmed sequences of extreme often sexual violence. The shots made him nauseous so he will associate all forms of violence with his sensations of nausea. The doctors wotking with him used their knowledge of psychology to adapt his behavior in a way that caused him physical and emotional pain.

World Medical Association put together guidelines for bioethical research with Human subjects