Remember our past in order to protect the future of medicine

A guest column by the American College of Physicians, exclusive to KevinMD.com. Her name is Wanda Poltawska. She is currently 96 years old and showing the physical signs of advanced aging, but remains mentally sharp and insightful. What makes her special is that in 1941, at 19 years of age, she was sent to a concentration camp in Germany, and while there was subjected to medical “experimentation” by Nazi physicians.  She was administered multiple drugs and underwent a variety of non-indicated procedures. And because she was Polish and imprisoned for subversive activities, using her as a subject for medical experimentation was considered completely acceptable by the greater German physician community.  Amazingly, she survived both the experiments and the war, although she was one of the few.  She ultimately went on to become a psychiatrist and has written extensively and conducted research on the effects of incarceration on children in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. I recently had the opportunity to attend the Medical Review – Auschwitz: Medicine Behind the Barbed Wire conference in Poland where I met Dr. Poltawska.  This conference focused on the pseudo-medical experiments carried out on the prisoners of Nazi concentration camps by physicians, the consequences of imprisonment to inmates’ health, and most importantly, the ethical implications of Nazi medicine for contemporary medical practice.  Appropriately, the conference took place in Krakow, a ...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Physician American College of Physicians Primary Care Source Type: blogs