Crimes against Humanity
THE RIGHT TO FREEDOM FROM EXTRAJUDICIAL KILLINGS
THE UN COVENANT ON CIVIL RIGHTS
Article 6
1. Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.
2. In countries which have not abolished the death penalty, sentence of death may be imposed only for the most serious crimes in accordance with the law in force at the time of the commission of the crime and not contrary to the provisions of the present Covenant and to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This penalty can only be carried out pursuant to a final judgement rendered by a competent court.
THE RIGHT TO FREEDOM FROM EXPERIMENTATION
THE UN COVENANT ON CIVIL RIGHTS
Article 7: "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. In particular, no one shall be subjected without his free consent to medical or scientific experimentation."
This article derives from the Nuremberg Code (below) adopted in connection with the Nuremberg Trials.
THE NUREMBERG CODE
The Nuremberg Code formed part of the legal ground on which the Nazi doctors were sentenced to death.
Section 1: 'The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent, be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, over-reaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion, have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved, as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision
This latter element requires that, before the acceptance of an affirmative decision by the experimental subject, there should be made known to him the nature, duration, purpose of the experiment, method and means by which it is to be conducted, all inconveniences and hazards reasonably to be expected, the effects upon his health or person, which may possibly come from his participation in the experiment.
The duty and responsibility for ascertaining the quality of the consent rests upon each individual who initiates, directs or engages in the experiment. It is a personal duty and responsibility which may not be delegated to another with impunity'.
The Nuremberg Code has 10 sections (see link above). The most important read:
"4. The experiment should be so conducted as to avoid all unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury.
5. No experiment should be conducted, where there is an apriori reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur; except, perhaps, in those experiments where the experimental physicians also serve as subjects.
7. Proper preparations should be made and adequate facilities provided to protect the experimental subject against even remote possibilities of injury, disability, or death.
8. The experiment should be conducted only by scientifically qualified persons. The highest degree of skill and care should be required through all stages of the experiment of those who conduct or engage in the experiment.
9. During the course of the experiment, the human subject should be at liberty to bring the experiment to an end, if he has reached the physical or mental state, where continuation of the experiment seemed to him to be impossible.
10. During the course of the experiment, the scientist in charge must be prepared to terminate the experiment at any stage, if he has probable cause to believe, in the exercise of the good faith, superior skill and careful judgement required of him, that a continuation of the experiment is likely to result in injury, disability, or death to the experimental subject".
"Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10", Vol. 2, pp. 181-182. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1949.]
EXAMPLE - EXPERIMENTATION ON DETAINEES IN GUANTANAMO
Daily Mail : 'As we dug deeper, we discovered evidence buried deep in medical reports that detainees had not only been choked, but were regularly injected with overdoses of mefloquine, an anti-malaria drug that induces paranoia and nightmarish hallucinations. The chief of interrogations at Guantanamo, Major General Geoffrey Miller, had previously been in charge at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where infamously he had sanctioned the use of attack dogs to intimidate detainees. Miller referred to Guantanamo as ‘America’s Battle Lab’, a place ‘to radically create new methodologies that are needed to complete this mission in defence of our nation’ — in other words, a testing ground for refined torture techniques.
HISTORY OF MEDICAL ATROCITIES BY THE WHITE HOUSE
