Q. For conspiring with the enemy during the war; such cases have not only arisen but they have also been punished, and you must know that from reading your newspaper, Professor; those are political prisoners. Do you not have those in America?
A. Not to my knowledge.
Q. Doctor, if I understood you correctly, you stated this morning that a medical experiment with fatal consequences is to be designated either as an execution or as a murder; is that what you said?
A. I did not say that.
Q. What did you say then?
A. It was more or less as I quoted it, as I remember, I said that under the circumstances which surrounded the first death in high-altitude experiments at Dachau, which Dr. Romberg is alleged to have witnessed, Dr. Rascher killed the subject; that the death could be viewed only as an execution or as a murder; and if the subject were a volunteer, then his death could not be viewed as an execution.
Q. Witness, in your opinion, is there a difference whether the experiments are to be traced back to the initiative of the experimenter himself, or whether they are ordered by some authoritative office of the state which also assumes the responsibility for them?
A. Yes. There is a difference, but that difference does not pertain, in my opinion, to the moral responsibilities of the investigator toward his experimental subject.
Q. I cannot understand that, Doctor. I can imagine that the state gives an experimenter the order, particularly during wartime, to carry out certain experiments, and that in peacetime, on his own initiative, the researcher would not carry out such experiments unless he was ordered to by the state. You must recognize this difference yourself.
A. That does not carry over to the moral responsibility of the individual to his experimental subject. I do not believe that the state can assume the responsibility of ordering a scientist to kill people in order to obtain knowledge.