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R Winau

Publications and source records attributed to R Winau.

10 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1996

Informed consent in human experimentation before the Nuremberg code.

The issue of ethics with respect to medical experimentation in Germany during the 1930s and 1940s was crucial at the Nuremberg trials and related trials of doctors and public health officials. Those involved in horrible crimes attempted to excuse themselves by arguing that there were no explicit rules governing medical research on human beings in Germany during the period and that research practices in Germany were not different from those in allied countries. In this context the Nuremberg code of 1947 is generally regarded as the first document to set out ethical regulations in human experimentation based on informed consent. New research, however, indicates that ethical issues of informed consent in guidelines for human experimentation were recognised as early as the nineteenth century. These guidelines shed light on the still contentious issue of when the concepts of autonomy, informed consent, and therapeutic and non-therapeutic research first emerged. This issue assumes renewed importance in the context of current attempts to assess liability and responsibility for the abuse of people in various experiments conducted since the second world war in the United States, Canada, Russia, and other nations.

Codes of Ethics↗
PubMed1994

The hippocratic oath and ethics in medicine.

For the last number of years, when ethical problems were discussed in Germany in public, the hippocratic oath was quoted as the valid norm for medical ethics. Although no physician swears this oath in Germany, it is necessary to know its contents, its origin and its role in the history of medicine. And it is necessary to ask some questions: What are the ethical claims of the hippocratic oath? Does it really originate from Hippocrates? How and why did the hippocratic oath become the 'Magna Carta' of behaviour for physicians? Do specific medical ethics exist over time? Do specific medical ethics exist in general? And if it exists, can it be normative ethics? A short survey of the multiple dependences of medical situations shows that ethics in medicine must undertake a new beginning. It cannot be normative ethics, it cannot be situation ethics, it must be differential ethics. It has to respect rules and declarations, but it has also to compare the benefits and risks. In the center of such ethics stands the responsibility of the physician. To assume this responsibility, the physician needs knowledge, the ability to make decisions and a conscience.

Ethics, Medical↗