Live Webinar: DENTISTS DURING THE NAZI ERA: DR. SEUSS, the SS & DENTAL GOLD - Lessons in Bioethics for Today
Location: Live Webinar
Email: diane@ninthdistrict.org
Phone: 914-747-1199
Live Webinar: DENTISTS DURING THE NAZI ERA: DR. SEUSS, the SS & DENTAL GOLD - Lessons in Bioethics for Today
Instructor: Howard Israel, DDS - Clinical Professor of Surgery, Department of Surgery - Division of Dentistry and Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery - Weill Cornell Medicine
Holocaust Genocide Contemporary Bioethics Steering Committee
University of Colorado Center for Bioethics & Humanities
Anschutz Medical Campus
Adjunct Clinical Professor of Dental Medicine, Touro College of Dental Medicine
Summary: The role of the medical profession in committing crimes against humanity during the Nazi regime has been studied extensively. Still, it is difficult to comprehend how a profession of healers morphed into executioners and researchers who abused and tortured people to promote the pseudoscience of “racial hygiene.” The history of the dental profession in Europe during the Third Reich has received little attention, although it is quite significant. The importance of learning this history today should be a high priority in dental education to reinforce the importance of ethical decision making in the care of each individual patient.
Learning Objectives:
- Describe the role of dentists and physicians in academic institutions and concentration camps in committing crimes against humanity.
- Consider factors that led to healers in both the medical and dental professions to obtain gold from murdered victims and perform inhumane experimentation on prisoners.
- Analyze how a political ideology that dictated public health policy could influence the healing professions.
- Answer the question - is it possible for this to happen again?
- Utilize the knowledge of the history of dentists during the Third Reich to reinforce the importance of ethics and humanity in dentistry and society today.
