DIRECT EXAMINATION
Dr. Fritz: You heard the lecture which Dr. Ding gave on his experiments at the Third Conference of Consulting Physicians in the Section for Hygiene and Tropical Hygiene?
Defendant Rose: Yes. That was the time when I protested openly against this whole method.
Q. Well, what happened?
A. Dr. Ding gave his lecture in a camouflaged form as in his article for the Journal of Hygiene and Infectious Diseases. Therefore, the unsuspecting listener could not tell that it was about experiments on human beings.
When the discussion began, I commented on the results of these experiments. That part of my statement is contained in the record of the conference. It is Document Rose 38, which has already been submitted. (Rose 38, Rose Ex. 10.) I do not intend to read these remarks, I simply want to point out that one can find there what I said about the technical aspect of the experiments and about the results.
Then I spoke of the ethical side of the whole thing and this part of my statement has been stricken from the record. I cannot, of course, reproduce today the exact wording but only the sense of what I said. I said more or less as follows: As important and as basic as the results may have been, they were nevertheless achieved at the cost of a number of human lives. We as hygienists should object against a life and death experiment being performed as the prerequisite for the introduction of a vaccine. So far, the customary procedure had been the testing with animal experiments and subsequent determination of tolerance by human beings and epidemiological exploitation. This procedure had proved its value. We had to stick to it and we couldn’t let other political and state authorities force us to conduct human experiments. I spoke much longer at the time. I spoke for at least ten minutes. Ding replied that he could pacify my conscience. The experimental subjects had been criminals condemned to death. My answer was: I knew that myself. I was not interested in the individuals concerned but in the principle of human experiments in testing vaccines. At this comment Professor Schreiber interrupted the discussion. He said he protested against my criticism and if we wanted to discuss basic ethical questions we could do that during the recess. He would have this part of the discussion stricken from the record and that was done. After the meeting various participants came to me and we discussed the whole matter. Some agreed with me; others were convinced that in such an important question human experiments were justified. Of course, those people who [sic] believed Ding’s assurance that the subjects were criminals condemned to death. I no longer remember the individual men with whom I talked during the recess and I don’t know who was in favor and who was against it. The only one I remember is Professor Mrugowsky because he spoke as an SS member and the experiments had been conducted by an SS doctor, and because I thought that Mrugowsky was Ding’s superior in every way. Of course, I remember that Mrugowsky of all people came and said that, in principle, he agreed with me, and that he had expressed similar misgivings to Grawitz and that Grawitz had rejected his misgivings. Then I also learned from Mrugowsky that Himmler was behind all these experiments.
Dr. Fritz: Did you later discuss the matter of experiments on human beings before a large group of people?