Today, August 20, 2022, marks the 75th anniversary of the end of the trials of medical professionals at Nuremberg. Central principles and fundamental rights were enshrined as a result of the trials, which were then encoded in international law,...
Today, August 20, 2022, marks the 75th anniversary of the end of the trials of medical professionals at Nuremberg. Central principles and fundamental rights were enshrined as a result of the trials, which were then encoded in international law, domestic laws, and the codes of ethics followed by institutional review boards in US universities, the tri-council policy statement in Canada, and the codes of ethics of Anthropology associations. Nuremberg was a foundational event.
Inconvenient Parallels
Maleficent and dishonest commentators in regime media “roll their eyes” at any mention of “Nuremberg” in the present, as if Nuremberg belongs to a separate time, place, and experience—far away and long ago—and as if Nuremberg did not inscribe basic ethical principles that are meant to be transported across a wide range of activities involving humans. As the live event commemorating the anniversary unfolded today, Jewish speakers like Vera Sharav, a medical ethicist and Holocaust survivor, plus an Israeli doctor, noted how German regime media likened those attending the event to the Nazis (!). This has to be the most perverse, abusive inversion that one can imagine—clearly a case of projection. I can think of no Nazi who would celebrate the demolition of Nazi institutions, Nazi laws and practices, and the Nazi state. Nevertheless, some ironically named “Antifa” activists showed up at the event—ironic because their name ought to match their actual practice (as they have repeatedly shown): Pro-fascist (Profa). Others ritually balk at any association drawn between the Canadian regime and the Nazi regime, despite the parallels and exact matches so numerous to ignore that they will have to occupy a separate article. Indeed, one can draw identical parallels and duplicates between the “sanitary” policies of the Nazi Health Security State, and the current Health Security State that dominates. It is not surprising that the authorities—who must and will be held to account and brought to justice—should feel so threatened by those making these parallels, that out of desperation their merest retorts degenerate to inane juvenilia: “No, you are!”. Other responses are more clever, more defensive, trying to evade the worst outcomes from prosecution: hence the CDC’s recent reversal of some of its key guidelines.
The Nuremberg Code in Anthropology
This question of parallels and the continued relevance of Nuremberg, has profound and inevitable implications for anthropology itself.
Why? Because the very Nuremberg Code (pdf) was critical in the formation of anthropological ethics. While initially formulated to govern the practices of biomedical researchers, the Nuremberg code and its basic principles soon governed any science which involved research with human subjects. To take one current example, the University of Illinois’ Office for the Protection of Research Subjects explicitly credits the Nuremberg Code at the very outset of its statement. The same is true of Yale University’s office of Human Subjects Protection, and many others. When it came to opposing US anthropologists’ engagement with the military, David H. Price stated to the Chronicle of Higher Education:
“Ethics and research have always come out of interactions with the military in the social sciences. That’s where all of our ethics codes come from. There were no professional ethics codes codified until after World War II, and it was really the Nuremberg trials that produced the first human research ethics codes. Those came up with very basic standards about meeting voluntary informed consent…”.
The Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK also lists the Nuremberg Code among its ethics resources. There is no denying that the Nuremberg Code is foundational to the development of anthropological ethics themselves.
“In the fall of 2019, I was a professor of ethics and ancient philosophy; I taught students critical thinking + the importance of self-reflection, how to ask good questions and evaluate evidence, how to learn from the past and why democracy requires civic virtue.
“Fast forward to September 16, 2021 when I received a “termination with cause” letter after I questioned, and refused to comply, with my employer’s vaccine mandate. I was dismissed for doing exactly what I had been hired to do. I was a professor of ethics questioning what I take to be an unethical demand. You don’t have to look very hard to see the irony”.—Dr. Julie Ponesse
Informed Consent, First and Foremost
First and foremost, the right to informed consent stands out as the critical ethical point of Nuremberg. Some have laboured away at trying to force understanding of informed consent as conditional upon the performance of experimentation—and thus cannot be applied to mandatory “vaccination” in the present (“because the vaccines are not experimental”). This is both false and illogical. It is illogical because anthropological fieldworkers do not engage in medical experimentation as such, and yet the Nuremberg-derived principle of informed consent still applies. Nobody in Anthropology argues that “informed consent” does not apply because what we do is not experimental. The assertion is also based on a plain, easily disproven falsehood: that the gene therapies are not experimental. The most basic definition of “experimental” involves the trial of a new product which has not yet been finalized. The mRNA gene therapies that are the subject of “vaccine” mandates in North America and elsewhere, are currently undergoing a general human trial—and those trials do not end until next year. (The CDC was supposed to be monitoring safety signals, but reportedly has not kept up to date.) Indeed, the FDA itself indicated that Pfizer had yet to complete 13 safety trials, some of which do not end until 2025. These investigational trial products are thus only authorized for “emergency use” (which inevitably brings up debate about the real nature of this “emergency” and whether the term is warranted).
As I have already pointed out elsewhere, we are dealing with experimental gene therapies that are not vaccines: “First, because the CDC changed its definition of ‘vaccines’ in August of 2021, to accommodate the new products developed for the market, which did not meet the previous CDC definition of ‘vaccine’. Second, because these are called gene therapies in the pharmaceutical industry itself; by the FDA they are formally referred to as investigational new drugs; in the legal arena, they are classed as prototypes by Pfizer itself. Note also that ‘emergency use’ investigational new drugs are defined by the FDA itself as ‘experimental’. We can thus call these products experimental gene therapies to be brief, all complaints notwithstanding”.
I do not even need to go into the volumes of publications that have established serious problems with the safety trials conducted by Pfizer and Moderna (they are not conducted by any independent medical review agency), and the large and still growing evidence of injuries and deaths, as well as the failure of the products to achieve even their most minimal of promised tasks (and, no, they were never tested for preventing hospitalizations or deaths). My worry here is much narrower and more specific.
Where have anthropologists stood when it came to the violation of everyone’s informed consent, including their own? If bodily autonomy is to mean nothing, what does it then mean to be human? This cuts to the very core of the purpose of their mission.
Anthropologists—given their resounding silence—have possibly been deceived, distracted, or confused by all the talk about “safe and effective,” “experimental,” “unsafe and inadequate,” etc., and may have forgotten that the basic principle that should concern them is that of free, voluntary, and prior informed consent.
Anthropologists Had Every Reason to be Concerned
Anthropologists had every reason to be concerned when they witnessed their own universities mandating injection, requiring personal disclosure of private medical information, in an effort to clearly scare and/or blackmail students, staff, and faculty into taking these shots lest they be expelled, suspended, or fired. Everything about that should have sounded deafening alarm bells that something was wrong, very wrong.
They should have been equally alarmed about what was happening across their society, across a wide array of occupations, professions, and social settings. Locking down, “until a vaccine is ready,” already implied that the shots would be made mandatory: “because the only way we get back to normal is if everyone gets vaccinated”. This was the common refrain repeated ad nauseam from officials around the world. The implied threat, the blackmail, and the extortion were baked in from the outset. No shots? Lockdowns continue, or perhaps the lockdowns are narrowed down like a fence around a particular group of persons—the “unvaccinated”—who faced restrictions on mobility, and who were denied the right to access education, the right to work, the right to unemployment assistance, and in some countries were also denied the right to medical care, and to top it all off, were subject to fines and detention. The “unvaccinated” were thus all placed in a virtual camp. In Canada, some discriminatory measures remain in place. Never in our lifetimes have we witnessed a designated category of human beings treated in such a manner. Never in our universities have we witnessed students physically dragged out of classrooms, by police, in front of the professor and other students, because of that student’s health status.
Anthropologists could have been worried not just by the level of coercion, that deprived consent given freely and voluntarily, but they could have also grown shocked by the denial of information necessary for making an informed decision. They should have been perplexed at the level of censorship, specifically directed against doctors and nurses around the world, with tens of millions of videos and posts deleted, and accounts terminated. They would have noted that the very premise of censorship is a denial of information. They should have been outraged to see segregation practiced right in front of their very eyes, and done in their name. They might have grown worried when the absolute affirmations from medical authorities began to fracture and crumble—whether it was Fauci asserting that “vaccinated” people become “dead ends” for the virus; that “vaccination” builds a “brick wall” against Covid-19; that the “vaccines” would give us “herd immunity”; or then, sure, “breakthrough infections” are a statistical probability, but hey come on now. Anthropology professors and students might have asked questions, when after the second, third, fourth, and maybe the fifth jab, and after all the masking, they still got infected and got sick. And besides, who here can list the known long-term effects of the mRNA shots? Anyone? No: because it was neither informed nor was it consent.
The Silence is Final
Instead, what have we noticed? Total silence from the anthropological community during humanity’s worst moment since World War Two.
Over a decade ago, until about nine years ago, this site was part of a collective effort to confront anthropological support for counterinsurgency and other military and intelligence missions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Africa. At the time, scores of US anthropologists stood up and spoke out about the violation of informed consent by anthropologists employed by the military to conduct fieldwork in war zones. They revisited and revised their code of ethics. They wrote and signed declarations. They called for professional commissions of inquiry. They set up task forces. They organized symposia and numerous conference panels. They were keynote speakers. They wrote dozens of articles and books. They launched websites. They spoke to the media. They wrote for the media. They wrote in alternative media. They appeared in documentaries.
But now? Silence. Total, absolute, and utterly damning silence.
Anthropologists might flatter and assure each other that what they do is still valid, credible, and an “important contribution”. You will see them clearly unperturbed, carrying on business as usual, getting ready for the start of the semester. And to be sure not all anthropologists stayed silent here in Canada—counting myself, I can count all those who spoke out in some fashion, on four fingers. I am not addressing the four of us; I am addressing the other 600+ professors.
Anthropology has not just failed itself, and the world, yet again. It’s not just another failure. No, not at all. This failure is the final one. This is the final, irreparable, irreversible failure. There is no coming back from this. The silence of anthropologists is a clear sign to everyone that, from this period onward, nothing produced by university-based anthropologists has even a shred of credibility, nothing, on any topic. It’s over. You’re finished. You did it to yourselves.
There it is: we are now in the time of Zero Anthropology. What is “zero anthropology”? This is it. It is the time when hegemonic anthropology collapses and degenerates, betrayed by its own silence on the issues anthropologists said mattered most. As we commemorate Nuremberg 75, we can realize where anthropology stood, lest we forget. Never again.
“I have no doubt that COVID-19 is the greatest threat to humanity we have ever faced; not because of a virus; that is just one chapter of a much longer, more complex story; but because of our response to it. And that response is, I believe, earning its place in every medical ethics textbook that will be published in the next century. What can we do? As Canadian chemist and author Orlando Battista said, ‘An error doesn’t become a mistake until you refuse to correct it’. In our world, politeness, ‘getting by,’ ‘flying under the radar’ seem to be the goals. Gone are the 60s revolutionaries, gone are the patriots of early America. We are the victims—and the soldiers—of a pandemic of compliance. But compliance is not a virtue; it isn’t neutral, and it certainly isn’t harmless”.—Dr. Julie Ponesse
I will close with three videos relevant to the moment:
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