A. They have understanding for the importance of the maintenance of the principles of medical ethics which apply over a long period of years, rather than a short period of years. Physicians and medical scientists should do nothing with the idea of temporarily doing good which, when carried out repeatedly over a period of time, would debase and jeopardize a method for doing good. If a medical scientist breaks the code of medical ethics and says, “Kill the person,” in order to do what he thinks may be good, in the course of time that will grow and will cause a loss of faith of the public in the medical profession, and hence destroy the capacity of the medical profession to do its good for society. The reason that we must be very careful in the use of human beings as subjects in medical experiments is in order not to debase and jeopardize this method for doing great good by causing the public to react against it. Q. Witness, do you not believe that your ideal attitude here is more or less that of a single person standing against the body of public opinion? A. No I do not. That is why I read out the principles of medical ethics yesterday, and that is why the American Medical Association has agreed essentially to those principles. That is why the principles, the ethical principles for the use of human beings in medical experiments, have been quite uniform throughout the world in the past. Q. Then you do not believe that the urgency, the necessity of this city would make a revision of this attitude necessary? A. No, not if they were in danger of killing people in the course of testing out the new drug or remedy. There is no justification in killing five people in order to save the lives of five hundred. Q. Then you are of the opinion that the life of the one prisoner must be preserved even if the whole city perishes? A. In order to maintain intact the method of doing good, yes. Q. From the point of view of the politician, do you consider it good if he allows the city to perish in the interests of preserving this principle and preserving the life of the one prisoner? A. The politician, unless he knows medicine and medical ethics, has no reason to make a decision on that point. Q. But as a politician he must make a decision about what is to happen. Shall he coerce the doctor to carry out the experiment, or shall he protect the doctor from the rage of the multitude? A. You can’t answer that question. I should say this, that there is no state of no politician under the sun that could force me to perform a medical experiment which I thought was morally unjustified. Q. You then, despite the order, would not carry out the order, and would prefer to be executed as a martyr? A. That is correct, and I know there are thousands of people in the United States who would have to do likewise. Q. And do you not also believe that in thousands of cities the population would kill the doctor who found himself in that position?