Dignity, Justice, and the Nazi Data Debate: On Violating the Violated Anew by Carol V.A. Quinn (review)

Carol V.A. Quinn brings fresh attention to a continuing problem: the perpetuation of harm to Holocaust victims by present actions, in this case the use of data exploited from victims of the Nazi medical experiments. The first step in addressing this longstanding injustice, Quinn argues, is for survivors to take control of the data.

Almost without exception, victims, and survivors' voices have not been incorporated into guidelines and protocols for dealing with the data or other issues arising from medical crimes under the Third Reich.¹ In response, Quinn makes a book-length argument that the medical data should be controlled by survivors, supporting her argument with three central claims, each given a chapter: 1) survivors themselves are "the living data"; 2) controlling the data will help restore survivors' dignity and aid their healing; and 3) as the real experts, survivors know best what to do with the data and how to prevent future abuses.

Data from Nazi medical experiments was used in Europe and the United States after the war, often without acknowledgment. As Quinn points out, however, many physicians and scientists have viewed the data as invalid, in part because it was obtained through torture and murder, and—more fundamentally—because it was often obtained through unscientific methods or by untrained assistants.

Aside from the validity of the data itself, many physicians and ethicists have debated the ethics of using it. Some have argued for its across-the-board use, some for it to be destroyed. Yet Quinn puts aside the discourse on the ethics of data: "Our debate, when controlled by the dominant group (of 'experts'), has centered on whether it is ethical to use the data, but when we take the survivors' voices seriously, the debate shifts. The question now becomes who should make such decisions. Whether we should use the data becomes secondary" (p. 123). Further, Quinn claims that "most survivors (at least those who have made their views known) and their advocates oppose the data's use, arguing that such use harms them" (p. 20).

Quinn's claim about survivors' attitudes may need further empirical verification, as Quinn appears to acknowledge. A primary justification for use of the data is that it has life-saving potential. In fact, such an argument can be made on the basis of the principle in Jewish law that if one possesses the means to save a life then one should do so.² More empirical study of survivors' attitudes than Quinn presents is needed.

Readers may also question Quinn's connection of her case to arguments drawn from psych-ology, continental philosophy, trauma studies, standpoint theory, and other fields. Greater concern arises from the strong and unqualified sweep of some of her claims, notably her chapter discussing Kant's influential account of dignity and his principle of always treating human beings as ends-in-themselves, never as mere means. After explicating several aspects of Kant's argument, Quinn goes on to thoroughly dismiss it. Contemporary Kantians like Christine Korsgaard have interpreted being an "end-in-itself" as a moral standing or claim we have in relation to each other,³ but Quinn treats the Kantian idea of dignity as an essentialist, God-given metaphysical property of all rational agents (p. 42). This is a surprising result, given the account's endurance and the many pages Quinn spends discussing its complexities.

After arguing that the Kantian conception cannot make sense of survivors' accounts of the loss of their dignity, in chapter 3 Quinn begins to fill in her argument for granting survivors control over the Nazis' medical data, arguing that doing so respects, and indeed restores, survivors' dignity. Quinn proceeds by introducing kavod (), a concept survivors in Israel told her better captures their notion of "dignity." One's kavod, according to Quinn, involves control in the sense of selfdetermination; it...