Environmental influences

Discussion: The research study I chose is about the ophthalmic experiments conducted by Josef Mengele. He was known as the Angel of Death and was a German Schutzstaffel officer and doctor during World War II. Although Mengele was not an ophthalmologist, the objective of this study was to find a cure for heterochromia. Mengele had multiple heterochromatic prisoners at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943 who were used as his test subjects. He would send their eyes to another researcher, Magnussen, in Berlin for examination. Mengele administered adrenaline drops into children inmates’ eyes in an attempt to change eye color and to study environmental influences (Halioua, 2020).

No change of eye color ever took place during this experiment. This experiment caused inflamed eyes that diminished sight, created fear and distress, and even death of a newborn baby (Richard, 2020). The ethical principles violated were informed consent, autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. I believe every provision of the ANA Code of Ethics was violated but the main provisions violated were 1.1, 1.2, and 1.4. Mengele had no respect for human dignity regarding the prisoners of the Holocaust. The relationship with the patients was also not respected and bias and prejudice were not set aside. Human dignity was not recognized among the patients, and they did not have the legal right to determine what will be done to themselves since they were prisoners (American Nurses Association, 2017). The researchers could have avoided this violation by understanding there is no scientific benefit that could have been derived from this procedure. This procedure should have never occurred, and it is disturbing to know this experiment and hundreds of others happened during the Holocaust.