BRITISH ADVISORY COMMITTEE FOR MEDICAL WAR CRIMES

1946 - 1949

Admin history: After the Second World War, the International Scientific Commission (War Crimes) was set up to investigate medical experimentation on humans conducted in Nazi internment camps and other sites. The first secretary general of the Commission was Canadian Wing Commander John WR Thompson. UK prime minister, Clement Attlee, asked RCP president, Charles McMoran Wilson (Lord Moran), to lead the British contingent of the Commission. In a letter of 4 June 1947 (part of MS5954/1) Thompson explained to Moran that 'the British would undertake to evaluate the scientific aspects of the work done in Concentration Camps, and the French were to discuss the Nazi research from the point of view of its moral invalidity'. Also on the British Advisory Committee were Sir Henry Hallett Dale of the Wellcome Trust, Sir Sydney Smith of the University of Edinburgh, Professor Sweeney of St Thomas' Hospital, and Major Arthur Keith Mant of the Royal Army Medical Corps. The Committee asked specialists to report on the experiements in different fields. The specialists were Carlos Paton Blacker (eugenics), Neil Hamilton Fairley (malaria), William George Barnard (phosgene poison), Valentine Herbert Ellis (orthopedic surgery), Cecil Wakeley (surgery), Aubrey Lewis (psychiatry), Charles Lovatt Evans (physiology), and Ronald Hare (bacteriology). All the reports concluded that the Nazi experiments were of no scientific or medical value. For example, Dr Blacker wrote 'Nothing could justify the initiation of experiments on human beings, even had these been voluntary [...]' (MS5955/3). The investigators found that the majority of the personnel involved at the camps were not qualified to carry out medical experiments, and that proper scientific procedure was not followed.‎