Medical education must include the field’s Nazi past, expert panel urges

All health care students worldwide should learn the history of medicine during the Nazi regime and the Holocaust, according to a report published Wednesday by The Lancet. The journal formed a commission in 2021 to explore how the lessons from that time could help improve medical education in the future. In its 50-page report, the commission highlights the stories of victims, perpetrators, collaborators, and resisters of Nazi crimes in the practice of medicine. These include the use of concentration camp prisoners in heinous medical experiments, widespread forced sterilizations, and “euthanasia” programs that murdered more than 200,000 people deemed mentally unfit, including children.

The report confronts the fact that the medical profession had one of the highest rates of Nazi party membership (more than half of Germany’s non-Jewish doctors joined the party) and also highlights doctors, midwives, and nurses who worked against the regime’s murderous practices. Among the report’s recommendations for future generations of medical personnel is the formation of an international professional organization focused on the issues and a digital library accessible in multiple languages to health care...