An extreme pessimist would say that the only thing one learns from history is that one learns nothing from history. In support of that argument, the extreme pessimist could point to the massive daily violations of the Nuremberg Code, which was created by the Nuremberg Military Tribunal in the case of United States v. Karl Brandt et al., one of the trials to bring National Socialists to justice after the Second World War.
German doctors were found guilty of conducting horrific medical experiments on concentration camp inmates without their informed and voluntary consent. While the Nuremberg Code is not binding law in any country, it was an ethical code developed as part of the court’s verdict in the trial. The Nuremberg Code’s first principle includes the following: “The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential … without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion.”
Nicole Bogart of CTV has argued that “[t]he Nuremberg Code is specifically about experimentation, which means its principles are no longer relevant once a vaccine has been through a clinical trial and approved for use” by Health Canada. Ms. Bogart’s thesis is pure balderdash. The inhumane and deadly experiments that concentration camp prisoners were forced into were also approved by the National Socialist government of the day.