If you are a WWII history buff, you probably recognize the name of Josef Mengele, the ethically challenged Nazi physician who was known as “The Angel of Death.” Dr Shiro Ishii was his Japanese analog.

Dr Ishii, who later became a Lt General, was in charge of Unit 731 of the Imperial Japanese Army located in a suburb of Harbin, Manchuria. This was the most famous biological warfare death camp but not the only one. Others included even Nanking. Human subjects were inoculated and thousands died. The list of organisms included such delights as anthrax, meningococcus, influenza, smallpox, tetanus, typhoid, typhus, tuberculosis, plague and many others.

For effective Biological Warfare one has to know how to weaponize and disseminate the organisms. Aerosols? Bombs? Water supply? It was a difficult challenge. The heat of exploding bombs would kill organisms and those that survived that challenge would die off in the atmosphere from drying and UV exposure. This was also true of aerosols. Would there be person-to-person spread and could an epidemic be controlled? Many questions.

After the war, Ishii was captured. But instead of being executed for killing thousands of Chinese citizens and POWs, he was offered amnesty in return for turning over the records of his experiments to the Americans. Although medical ethics did not allow American researchers to perform experiments on living human beings, ethics did allow American authorities to exonerate the person who did the experiments.

General Ishii thus lived until October 9, 1959 dying at the age of 67. (“The Angel of Death” lived until February 7, 1979 also dying at the age of 67 in Sao Paulo, Brazil although assiduously hunted by the Israeli Mossad.)

Makes me wonder, what is ethics anyway?

Gordon Short, MD
24 Mar 2014