Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Careers in Medicine: Bioethics & Nuremberg code

Many gifted pupils, their parents, and school counselors consider potential careers when planning high school courses, college selection, and outside classes, camps, and projects.

The Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH), provided by the U.S. Government Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is a great source of career information.

When considering a broad range of occupations in healthcare or research, courses in medical ethics, bioethics, and/or legal compliance may be in one's future. A frequent starting point for self-study in this area may include the Nuremberg Code and its history.

A copy of the Nuremberg Code is available to view online through the website of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Office of NIH History and Stetten Museum: https://history.nih.gov/display/history/Nuremberg+Code

While the downloadable PDF file of the Nuremberg Code is no longer available on the NIH website (https://history.nih.gov/research/downloads/nuremberg.pdf), it is found on the WayBack Machine, Internet Archive:
1) https://web.archive.org/
2) https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://history.nih.gov/research/downloads/nuremberg.pdf
3) https://web.archive.org/web/20200420085130/https://history.nih.gov/research/downloads/nuremberg.pdf

The study retracted by The Lancet is found here:
1) online link
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31180-6/fulltext
(backed up on WayBack Machine, Internet Archive, over 1,600 times)

2) downloadable 10-page PDF
https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736%2820%2931180-6
(backed up on WayBack Machine, Internet Archive, over 70 times)

3) retraction
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31324-6/fulltext
(backed up on WayBack Machine, Internet Archive, over 220 times)

4) retraction PDF
https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736%2820%2931324-6
(backed up on WayBack Machine, Internet Archive, over 20 times)

Interestingly, the study itself asserts: "The data collection and analyses are deemed exempt from ethics review."
In the PDF, this is found on page 3/10, just above the first red "E" in the word "RETRACTED."

In The Lancet's retraction statement, The Lancet said, in part:

Gifted persons interested in careers in science, research, and medicine must be self-disciplined to adhere to ethical standards, even when it may seem inconvenient or less than expedient.

Ethics in medicine and research remain important now, as in the past, and while errors/omissions/breaches of ethics may be found more quickly now, the misinformation may have already been repeated and been accepted.

Broadly accepted views attempting to censor new information, such as the early outpatient treatments for COVID-19, is reminiscent of similar events in history:
- flat-earth believers attempting to silence evidence that the earth was spherical,
- geocenterists attempting to refute evidence of heliocenterism: that the earth rotates around the sun, not the other way around.

Science is never settled.