During World War II, Nazi Germany conducted human medical experimentation on large numbers of people held in its concentration camps. Because many German aircraft were shot down over the North Sea, they wanted to determine the survival time of pilots downed in the cold waters before they died of hypothermia (exposure to cold temperatures). German U-boat personnel faced similar problems. In 1942, prisoners at the concentration camp in Dachau were exposed to hypothermia and hypoxia experiments designed to help Luftwaffe pilots. The research involved putting prisoners in a tank of ice water for hours (and others were forced to stand naked for hours at subfreezing temperatures) often causing death. Research in the pursuit of national interests using available human subjects is the ultimate example of questionable bioengineering. Since the Nazi scientific data were carefully recorded, this produces a dilemma that continues to confront researchers. As a bioengineer today, should you use these data in the design of any product (such as cold-weather clothing or hypothermia apparatus for open heart surgery)?

a. Since these experiments had government support and were of national interest at the time, they should be considered valid and available for scientific use now.

b. You should use these data, since similar scientific experiments have been conducted in other countries during periods in which national security was threatened, and these data are not questioned today. Even the United States conducted plutonium experiments on unsuspecting and supposedly terminally ill patients (some of whom survived to old age!).

c. This is just history and should have no bearing on the value or subsequent use of the data obtained.

d. Do not use the data.

Use the Engineering Ethics Matrix format to summarize your conclusions.