[Sulfonamide-research on human subjects in Nazi concentration camps: a critical re-evaluation of the epistemological and ethical dimension].

Existing scholarship on the experiments performed in concentration camps beginning in 1942 on the value of sulfonamides in treatment of wound infections, in which inmates were used as experimental subjects, maintains that not only were the experiments ethically and legally completely reprehensible and unacceptable, but that they were also bad science in the sense that they were investigating questions that had already been resolved by valid medical research. In contrast to this, the paper argues on the basis of contemporary publications that the value of sulfonamides in the treatment of wound infections, including gas gangrene infections, was not yet established, that is, that the questions pursued by the experiments had not been resolved. It also argues that regarding their "design" and methodical principles, the experiments directly followed the rationality of contemporary clinical trials and animal experiments. However, for the step from animal to the human experiment, the experimental "objects" were only in regard to their body, but not to their individuality and subjectivity regarded as "human". In a concluding section, the paper lines out some implications for an adequate historical reconstruction of medical research on humans, in particular the importance of a combined focus on the scientific rationality as well as explicit or implicit value hierarchies. Further, the article points to the potential impact of such a revised image of the sulfonamide experiments for present day debates on the ethics of medical research.