Medical ethics must be informed by a robust understanding of medicine’s role within the Nazi regime, according to a new report from a commission of prestigious journal, The Lancet.

The history of medicine is the focus of the ‘Lancet Commission on medicine, Nazism, and the Holocaust: historical evidence, implications for today, teaching for tomorrow’.

Through examples of discriminatory and inhumane medical policies and practices under the Nazi regime, the authors inform approaches to contemporary issues in medicine and underscore the importance of centring human rights and dignity in medical professionals’ conduct, including a willingness to stand up to wrongdoing whenever and wherever necessary.

“Nazi medical atrocities represent some of the most extreme and best-documented examples of medical involvement in human rights violations in history,” explains Commission Co-Chair Dr Sabine Hildebrandt of Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. “While it is tempting to view the perpetrators as incomprehensible monsters, the evidence put forward by the Commission demonstrates how many health professionals were capable of committing ethical transgressions and even crimes against their patients under certain conditions and pressures.”