Joseph Mengele Research Paper

“Human beings afflicted by disorders are unfit to reproduce, even to live” (imgur.com). This quote from Joseph Mengele shows why he was to perform the experiments. Dr. Mengele's experimentation on the “inferiors” and prisoners was horrible and a lot of them died, but they gathered really useful information from the experiments. In the seawater experiments that were performed at Dachau they were trying to find if it was better to go without water instead of drinking sea water and to see if the Berka method would improve the seawater. During the experiments the subjects were to be split into four groups and only eat “shipwreck emergency rations”. The first group was given no water, the second was given ordinary seawater, the third was given seawater treated with the Berka method, the fourth and final group was given seawater treated by the Schaefer method which would remove all the salt (Andrew Korda).
In the seawater experiments “damage to the kidneys occurred after six days
and death (which occurred in at least two cases) after 12 days” (Andrew Korda). In the seawater experiments “no major discovery was made”. The conclusion was that the Berka method was useless, that the Schaefer method was effective and that shipwrecked people should drink tiny quantities of seawater, as small quantities of seawater is better than no water. The hypothermia (freezing and rewarming) experiments were performed to determine the most effective way to re-warm German aviators who had to parachute into the sea.
Victims were forced into a vat of icy water for three to four hours at a time. In the hypothermia experiments “fatalities occurred only when the brainstem and the back of the head were also chilled. Autopsies showed large amounts of free blood, up to 0.5L, in the cranial cavity. The heart invariably showed right-sided failure” (Andrew Korda). 89 subjects died in the hypothermia experiments. The results of the hypothermia experiments were “that the cause of death from hypothermia was probably ventricular fibrillation; that rewarming was effective; that the neck and the occiput have to be protected to minimise the effects of hypothermia and that significant increase in blood sugar and blood viscosity was associated with hypothermia due to immersion. Some of the data produced are considered scientifically useful” (Andrew
Korda). The information gathered from the experiments benefited their army, but a lot of the Jews had perished for that. Useful information was found during the hypothermia tests and benefited the army. However during the seawater experiments little information was found. In the end the information obtained was not worth the cost of human lives.