The compulsory experiment must have its limits.
Here one must distinguish between responsibility for the arrangement of the experiment and for its conduct. In both cases the physician can have a share in it. The decision for the conduct of experiments on human beings can come from two sides, different in character. The demand can result from urgency in the interests of the community and can be vindicated by the state. During the war, experiments can be demanded by the armed forces in case of epidemics to be expected, such as malaria, typhus, and the like.
On the other hand the suggestion can come from the research side itself, which perceives a possibility of combating an evident state of distress, through the progress of medical science, and also demands experiments for the sake of the community.
The decision concerning the necessity for such experiments is a decision of usefulness taken by the state, consequently a political decision, signifying a balancing of expenditure and of success to be expected or hoped for.
There are different kinds of questions which have to be decided; first of all there are economic questions to be solved by the competent authorities; i. e., financial questions, supply of specialists, laboratories and so on.
Responsible for it are offices with means and possibilities available, which can dispose of them according to their own judgment. These offices are divided further according to their special interest in individual special spheres, such as air navigation, Wehrmacht, and the like.
No decisions can be made by an authority without any means at its disposal; this is valid for instance for the office “Science and Research” of the defendant Karl Brandt, which fulfilled only a recording and coordinating function within certain medical spheres. Evidently the activity of the Reich Research Council was chiefly that of an organ of control and had to eliminate superfluous research during the war by refusal of subsidies in order to help the small number of specialists and material by allotment of priority ratings and financial means. This was the task of the Reich Research Council and in the medical sphere this part of its general regulating activity was very small.
These offices had no power of decision as to whether experiments on human beings could be made or not, and they could not have it. The office which regulated the infliction of punishment and disposed of human beings subjected to experiments was the only office to take decisions. This corresponds to what is known about the conduct of experiments on human beings abroad, where the decision was also taken by administrative offices.
The authority for the infliction of punishments, as the authoritative office of the state, makes its independent decision while politically balancing the necessity for arranging experiments in the interests of the community against what can be expected of the condemned. Applied to German conditions during the war it means the following:
If the condemned are under the control of the authorities of justice competent for the execution of sentences, the responsibility rests upon the Reich Minister of Justice; if the execution of sentences is carried out by the Reich Leader SS and the Chief of Police in the concentration camps, the latter has to be responsible for it.