Medical Selection: Auschwitz Antecedents and Effluent

Abstract

Medical selection in Auschwitz represents the penultimate application of the traditional paradigm of medicine: the physician as gatekeeper and decision maker. The historical evolution of that role is considered in the context of public health, medical police, quarantine, and immigration. In Nazi Germany the physician was assigned responsibility for selection on behalf of the state. The ethical implications of medical selection are considered in the context of medicine today in an age of sophisticated biotechnology, constrained resources, and an aging population; an age in which the medical profession has yet to establish a fundamental system of values.