Human Rights at Home and Abroad: Past, Present, and Future

similarly to the Hippocratic Oath to ensure the professionals are going to fulfill their requirements for the
experiment.
Since the Nuremberg Code, like the Declaration of Human Rights, is not a legal document, it acts
as a reference of guidelines that should be considered if human experimentation needs to be conducted for
research. The Nuremberg Code should be mandatory for all human experimentation projects for the
protection and well being of any human test subject. In addition to the Nuremberg Code, a new oath,
similar to the Hippocratic Oath, should be specified for experimenters to take since they can potentially
risk someone‘s life, even with the subject‘s consent. The Hippocratic Oath is also a set of rules doctors
have to swear by to create and maintain a professional career in the medical field. Some of the ideas that
are expressed include patient confidentiality, nonsexual relationships with patients, and the overall well-
being of a patient. If a specific oath was created (and enforced with the Nuremburg Code) for scientists
and participants to take, the medicine field would have a greater success in research. This new oath
should contain the protection of patients‘ privacy, health, and emotional state. The new oath should also
be more specific about long term effects of experiments. Experiments should not cause long term
problems, or if they might, can be taken away immediately. Test subjects and the experimenters must
maintain a professional relationship at all times, as well as be informed of every step in the experiment.
All people who are qualified should be made to swear by this oath and enforce it, with knowledge and
understanding of the Nuremberg Code. This would mean that no torture or manipulation of any sort is to
be conducted for the result of an experiment. Also, the outcome of the experiment is to better society, so
any attempt to ruin a subject‘s personal life, or cause psychological problems is also forbidden. The
professionals in experiments are having the opportunity to better the population, so they should treat their
subjects as human beings with their specific needs, not by textbook and chart definitions. Topics like
human testing are still controversial, but with the enforcement of a new oath and Nuremberg Code, these
topics would not be so controversial since everyone is protected.
If these guidelines were to be taken seriously, the outcome of the experiment itself would
improve. Having test subjects who are willing to proceed and have trust in researchers that their rights are
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