Nuremberg Code

The Nuremberg Code is a set of 10 principles intended to satisfy moral, ethical, and legal concerns involving the use of any human subjects in research. An American military tribunal issued the Nuremberg Code in 1947 as part of the judgment in the so-called Doctors’ Trial, part of the Nuremberg Trials at the end of World War II. Some of the Nazi doctors and administrators prosecuted in the Doctors’ Trial were involved in medical research on concentration camp prisoners.

The code, a set of voluntary guidelines, was written to apply to medical experimentation involving human subjects and focuses on the physical and mental safety of the human subjects. Many of the following principles, which are paraphrased from the code, can apply to other forms of research:

• 1.
  Voluntary-informed consent of the human subject is essential;
• 2.
  Research should be intended to lead to results for the good of society that cannot be attained through other means;
• 3.
  Research should be based on prior animal research and knowledge of the disease or problem being studied;
• 4.
  Physical and mental suffering and injury must be avoided;
• 5.
  An experiment should not be conducted if there is reason to anticipate that death or a disabling injury will occur;
• 6.
  The degree of risk should be no greater than the humanitarian importance of the problem to be solved;
• 7.
  Precautions should be taken and facilities provided to protect research subjects against the possibility of injury, disability, or death;
• 8.
  An experiment should only be conducted by those who are scientifically qualified;
• 9.
  The subject should be able to end his or her participation in the study; and,
• 10.
  The scientist should be able to end the study at any stage after determining that continuing is likely to cause injury, disability, or death of the subject.

Under the code, informed consent must be based on legal capacity and cannot involve coercion, so research on children and others not capable of deciding for themselves (e.g., the mentally ill) is prohibited.

The Nuremberg Code informed subsequent international ethics statements. In 1964, the World Medical Association issued the voluntary international Declaration of Helsinki guidelines, which have been revised multiple times since then. Unlike the Nuremberg Code, the Declaration of Helsinki does allow for research on children and others who cannot decide for themselves as long as consent has been obtained from parents or other legal proxies.

See also Belmont Report; Conflict of Interest; Declaration of Helsinki; Ethical Issues in Educational Research; 45 CFR Part 46; Human Subjects Protections; Informed Consent; Institutional Review Boards