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Overview of the Nuremberg Code
The Nuremberg Code is a set of ethical principles for human experimentation established after World War II. It emerged from the Nuremberg Trials, specifically the trial of Nazi doctors who conducted inhumane experiments on concentration camp prisoners.
Key Principles
The Code consists of ten essential points that outline the ethical standards for conducting medical research on human subjects. These principles emphasize the importance of voluntary consent and the welfare of participants.
The ten points are:
Point Description
1 Voluntary consent is essential. Participants must have the legal capacity to consent and be able to make informed decisions without coercion.
2 The experiment should yield fruitful results for society.
3 The experiment should be designed to avoid unnecessary physical and mental suffering.
4 The risks should not exceed the benefits.
5 The experiment should be conducted by qualified individuals.
6 Participants should have the right to withdraw at any time.
7 The experiment should be stopped if it poses a risk to participants.
8 Proper precautions should be taken to protect participants.
9 The experiment should be conducted in a way that respects the dignity of participants.
10 The results should be made available to the public.
Significance
The Nuremberg Code has had a lasting impact on medical ethics and research practices worldwide. It laid the groundwork for subsequent ethical guidelines, including the Declaration of Helsinki and the International Code of Medical Ethics. Although it is not legally binding, it remains a crucial reference for ethical standards in human research.
Sources: Wikipedia, jamanetwork.com
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Jay Angler wrote:
J.P. Waters wrote: Hopefully what we can have 100% agreement on is that the gold standard for medical interventions is double-blind, placebo controlled study. Can we agree on that?
Sorry J.P., I have seen some really horribly done double-blind, placebo controlled studies.
Good studies are very expensive and money is tight, and many of the people doing the double-blind studies are being done by people or institutions that have motives that simply aren't as lily-white as we'd like them to be.
One of the better studies I read years ago, the doctor clearly had a bias and when the results contradicted his bias, his response was to not only suggest that there were faults in the system, but that the placebo effect could be as high as 60% . I actually agree with this last bit. I think many things which appear as "health" problems, our bodies can fix if we improve people's nutrition and decrease the stress from all sources, and give them the emotional support to trigger a really strong placebo effect.
However, there are other diseases that have a lifetime impact and genuinely high risk of death - Measles and Polio being two examples. I do agree that diseases rise and fall, only to rise again. Right now, measles is ascending, and the immunization has a sold track record and many children risk permanent damage to their immune systems which personally, I think is greater than any risk from that specific immunization. That does not mean that I agree with infants receiving immunizations for 20 different diseases at 2 months of age. However, the solution could include paid maternity leave so that parents can stay home with the child rather than risk their constant exposure to other virus multiplying children in large daycares. It can be helped by honest reporting by health authorities as to which immunizations are truly critical at any time. It can be helped by people working together to come up with compromises rather than encouraging extremism and conflict. It can be helped by improving our education system, and including high school courses involving quality information about how the human body works. And it can be helped by fixing our economic system which rewards people making huge amounts of money at the expense of the population at large.
Immunizations are just one flash point in an overall system that many average humans feel is beyond their ability to influence. Sometimes we can do more than we think we can, but at the moment, I'm going to go and influence my favorite chicken, instead of trying to influence electrons to do what I want them to.
M Ljin wrote:In permaculture, we are good at finding ways around false dichotomies. Can we think of something beyond vax/no vax?
We have all decided that spraying is a bad idea. But what if a disease does exist? Then we try to make use of diversity to confuse the pestilence. We make homes for natural predators, improve the health of the soil, think holistically.
There are a lot of positive things we can do to avoid illness that aren't vaccines, but modern "society" considers the costs of vaccination, whatever they may be, to be acceptable. Modern society also considers spraying vegetables to be an acceptable cost. We don't have to accept the "spray or have a harvest failure" dichotomy rule our gardens, nor do we have to have the "vaccinate or die of infectious disease" dichotomy rule our lives & health. There are a lot of ways to be creative and try doing things differently, like staying at home through the winter and not travelling by plane.
I am reading a history of the neighboring town. In former days they had figured out that if they made a sickhouse where people could be cared for and quarrantined. Some signed up to get sick so that they could get immunity to common diseases in a relatively safe and nourishing environment. It definitely wasn't Heaven but neither is anything else. (Back in the day, or somewhat before then, people would often live into theirhundredth decadehundreds.) (🤣)
I think that modern humans have difficulty realizing that life contains suffering that will happen whether they do X or Y. Worst of all, we tend to export suffering to poorer countries and poorer people (which is another discussion unto itself). Whether we vaccinate or don't people will get sick, in different ways. Spraying seems to help world food security but doesn't in the long run, it makes people sick and destroys the ecosystems that sustain us. Maybe I will write more about this, but I think that the more we realize the limits of our power, the happier we can be in our hearts and the more at peace with the world.
There definitely are ways to make things better... but my experience has shown me that all the things we do out of fear, end up coming back and hurting us in the end because fear encourages short term thinking. In some ways this is necessary and contributes to the beauty and diversity of the world, but when we lose track of the root of life, things start plummeting quickly.