Technical communication involves people connecting with other people about matters of mutual human concern.
- some values embedded in the scientific frame of mind can be carried to extremes
- of particular concern is the emotional disengagement of the researcher from the human research subject
- under Nazi power, science was not science for its own sake, rather it belonged to another value system, that of racial supremacy
- scandals have arisen over the use of human anatomical samples in medical education that came from prison and death camps
- someone wanted to publish information from Nazi hypothermia experiments--two points of view: could be put to use in our own times to improve survival equipment, but this information was gotten through terrible suffering
- some people believe that we should use such information because that would give some sort of purpose to the victims' suffering
- Masked language allowed Nazis to avoid expressing their full meaning clearly so as to avoid public outcries and to avoid taking ethical responsibility
- Euthanasia is thought of as mercy killing where it is the wish of the person, the Nazis however used the term for putting people to death in a way that was humane because the person was unworthy to live
- the primary purpose of law in society is to protect those who cannot protect themselves; the law during the Nazi time did exactly the opposite
- "special treatment" in Nazi opinion meant medical killing
- objectivization means treating people as objects rather than as persons equivalent to the researcher
- inadmissability principle- information obtained illegally is considered not to exist
- in US, African Americans diagnosed with syphilis were prescribed treatment, but in a number of cases, the patients were only given placebos to see the unimpeded progress of the disease -- Tuskegee experiment
- some of us will be involved in situations where the means and ends could ethically taint technical information we are dealing with
- influence of technology on society is so widespread that technology has become a goal in itself instead of a means to pursue other social goals
- memorandum from Willy Just to SS Lieutenant Colonel Walter Rauff who was in charge of motorized equipment for the SS
- "the load", "ninety-seven thousand have been processed"
- discussion of Jews as objects/cattle
- uses impersonal language rather than personal
- tobacco industry today
- memorandum is technical objectivity taken to an extreme
- report of Prof Hirt of plans for securing skulls of Jews for racial study purposes
- people murdered for the sake of science
- flat, unemotional tone simply reporting the facts
- Viktor Brack's report for mass, unwitting castration using X-rays as a form of racial hygiene to prevent the reproduction of various people
- Nazi race laws- Nuremberg Laws- aimed at ensuring the racial purity of the Aryan race
- science was made to serve politics
- seemingly concrete, exact technical information was derived in order to support race assumptions
- Chart of the Nuremberg Race law- racial categories/intermixing
- measuring facial features to establish racial qualities
- Aristotle would ethically condemn the Nazi regime, urge information to be used
- Kant assumes equivalence of all people
- Utilitarianism would favor using information
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