Pandora's box closed: The Royal Air Force Institute of Aviation Medicine and Nazi medical experiments on human beings during World War II.

In the months before and after the final surrender of Nazi Germany on 8 May 1945, British aviation medicine specialists were sent to the European continent to learn the progress that German aviation medicine had made since September 1939. For the medical officers at the Royal Air Force Institute of Aviation Medicine at Farnborough in Hampshire, the dilemma over whether the medical data from the Nazi aviation medicine experiments at Dachau concentration camp should be exploited presented profound moral and ethical problems. Their deliberations paralleled those of the 1945-46 Nuremberg Trial, which revealed the crimes that were committed under the Nazi regime. At the same time, the British medical establishment debated the morality of publishing the Nazi medical research to serve humanity. This article shows that on the basis of British wartime and post-war research, and determinations that were made by the British Advisory Committee for the Investigation of German Medical War Crimes, by 1948 the RAF IAM had essentially rejected the results of the Nazi aviation medicine experiments on scientific and ethical grounds.

One Giant Step for Physicians: A Texas Physician's Role in Space-Race Medicine.

This summer marks the 50th anniversary of America's Apollo 11 Lunar Mission - the first time humans set foot on the moon. Across the world, the event was heralded as a milestone of scientific achievement, and its three-man crew - Neil Armstrong, Col. Buzz Aldrin, and Lt. Col. Michael Collins - became American heroes. Laboring behind the scenes were swarms of unsung individuals whose expertise made the enterprise possible, including Texas cardiologist Lawrence E. Lamb, MD. His 2006 memoir Inside the Space Race: A Space Surgeon's Diary remains a vivid account of the essential role physicians played in the race to reach the moon.