The Nuremberg Trials were an attempt to bring justice to the Nazis for some of the most reprehensible criminal acts of World War II. One subset of those trials was known as “The Doctors’ Trial,” so named because it prosecuted some 23 distinguished medical scientists and physicians charged with murder and unspeakable torture through medical experimentation on concentration camp prisoners.
One of the most important outcomes of that trial—aside from meting out justice to the medical monsters—was the establishment of the Nuremberg Code, which offered a 10-point statement outlining proper limits on human experimentation moving forward. It proclaimed that such experimentation is justified only when the participation is voluntary, when the results benefit society, and when it is conducted in accord with basic principles that “satisfy moral, ethical, and legal concepts.” It memorialized what most decent people would have thought was already common sense and practice for a civilized society.
Notwithstanding the proscriptions of the Nuremberg Code, the Department of Defense authorized the use of unlicensed medications in the first Gulf War. Specifically, DoD obtained informed consent waivers from the FDA to allow the involuntary administration of unlicensed medications as a prophylactic against potential Iraqi chemical and biological weapons.
These medications were postulated by some medical professionals as a cause of so-called Gulf War Syndrome. In light of this, Congress passed a specific prohibition on the use of unlicensed medications on Service Members without their informed consent. The statute, codified at 10 USC §1107, requires informed consent from a Service Member before the administration of an unlicensed medication. Only the president can waive this requirement by ordering a waiver of informed consent in certain exigencies.
The statute got its first test when a federal court shut down DoD’s involuntary anthrax vaccination program in 2004 after a judge determined the anthrax vaccine had not been properly licensed by the FDA for use in a military context.
But nearly 20 years later, our country again flirted with violation of this statute and the Code as it mandated experimental COVID-19 vaccines for our Service Members. That injustice has yet to be fully addressed. Over 8,000 active-duty Service Members were involuntarily separated after failing to receive a religious exemption or other accommodation from the vaccine mandate and then refused to get vaccinated after being ordered to do so.
Hellbound and Down 