U.S. Complicity and Japan's Wartime Medical Atrocities: Time for a Response

Abstract

Shortly before and during the Second World War, Japanese doctors and medical researchers conducted large-scale human experiments in occupied China that were at least as gruesome as those conducted by Nazi doctors. Japan never officially acknowledged the occurrence of the experiments, never tried any of the perpetrators, and never provided compensation to the victims or issued an apology. Building on work by Jing-Bao Nie, this article argues that the U.S. government is heavily complicit in this grave injustice, and should respond in an appropriate way in order to reduce this complicity, as well as to avoid complicity in future unethical medical experiments. It also calls on other U.S. institutions, in particular the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, to urge the government to respond, or to at least inform the public and initiate a debate about this dark page of American and Japanese history.

Unit 731 and moral repair

“…The USA, we and others33 believe, should also do moral repair because of its handling of Unit 731 at the end of the war. The evidence indicates that the USA offered immunity from prosecution in exchange for some of Unit 731's data; so while German doctors and scientists were prosecuted for war crimes, Japanese doctors and scientists were not.…”

When Saying Sorry Is Not Enough: Acknowledging Past Wrongs in Human Subjects Research

“…However, while there is much known about the practice of Nazi medicine during this time period, there is relatively little awareness about what happened contemporaneously several thousand miles away by Japanese physicians and medical researchers. Devolder (2015) is to be commended for raising awareness and addressing this poorly explored, recent historical episode characterized by a calamitous medical ethics failure. More specifically, as part of a wide scale setup termed the "Ishii Network," named after its leader, Chief Medical Officer Shiro Ishii, Japanese doctors and researchers participated in and facilitated numerous human experiments in areas of biological warfare, military medicine, and infectious diseases.…”

The U.S. Complicity in Japan's Medical War Crimes: A Restatement on Why the U.S. Government Should Apologize and the U.S. Community of Bioethics Should Respond

“…Even more ironically, their decision to "pursue the national interest" became not only an "embarrassment" as anticipated but, opposite to their intention, a serious detriment to the long-term national interest of the United States. Now the American Journal of Bioethics has decided to take up this issue again through publishing a target article by young Belgian bioethicist Katrien Devolder (2015) and commentaries from interested scholars. Devolder has made an insightful philosophical effort to reignite debate about the American cover-up of Japan's wartime medical atrocities and, more generally, to explore moral issues associated with complicity of unethical medical research.…”