Read the following excerpt from, Grey Matters: Turning a Blind Eye: An Ethical Assessment by, William P. Cheshire, Jr., MD, MA, FAAN
Please answer questions 15-20 based on it.
In 1939, Adolph Hitler issued an order requiring physicians to report any child in their care up to the age of three with certain physical deformities or mental defects. A selection committee reviewed the questionnaires submitted by physicians and, without examining the children in person or consulting families or guardians, from a distance determined which children would be transported to extermination facilities, some of which were within prominent hospitals. The methods of killing included slow poisoning by pills with the intent of mimicking death due to natural causes, lethal injections, and gassing with cyanide or chemical warfare agents. More than 5000 children were killed in this first phase of the German euthanasia program.
Shortly thereafter, Hitler extended the program to adults and issued an order authorizing certain physicians "to grant a mercy death to patients judged incurably sick" in order to rid society of its weak, handicapped, costly, and "inferior" members…The German adult euthanasia program perfected the method of killing by gas chambers disguised as showers and set the stage for the systematic murder of Jews, homosexuals, communists, Gypsies, Slavs, and political prisoners in the death camps. Young, inexperienced physicians were promoted to manage the efficient facilities. From 1939 to 1941, more than 70,000 patients from more than a hundred German hospitals were killed.
The Aktion T-4 business director Hans Hefelmann later testified that "no doctor was ever ordered to participate in the euthanasia program; they came of their own volition."… Richard L. Rubenstein writes, "Once German physicians realized that they had an almost limitless supply of human beings at their disposal for experiments, some very respectable professors at medical schools and research institutes seized the unique opportunity."… One such professor was Julius Hallervorden, a neurologist who trained in Konigsberg and Berlin. Hallervorden was a prolific author of scientific publications and rose to the position of Chair of Neuropathology at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin-Buch. The degenerative brain disorder Hallervorden-Spatz disease still bears his name…Although Hallervorden did not directly participate in the killing of patients, he took advantage of the opportunity for scientific research available to him due to his proximity to the euthanasia program. During the summer of 1942, he wrote that he "was able to dissect 500 brains from feebleminded individuals." Hellervorden recounted…"Look here now, boys, if you are going to kill all these people, at least take the brains out so that the material could be utilized." They asked me: "How many can you examine?" and so I told them an unlimited number – "the more the better."…. There was wonderful material among these brains, beautiful mental defectives, malformations and early infantile disease. I accepted these brains of course. Where they came from and how they came to me, was really none of my business. The justification that Dr. Hallervorden presented in his reasoning for continuing his experimentation on human subjects is an example of:
a. Consequentialist ethics (ends justify means)
b. Deontological ethics
c. Virtue ethics
d. A and B, but not C
e. None of the above
