From 1946 to 1947, the Nuremberg war crimes trials took place, with fifteen of twenty-three German doctors and researchers found guilty of criminal plans for human experimentation. The trial court attempted to establish a set of principles for human experimentation that could serve as a code of research ethics. The result was the Nuremberg Code, which attempted to provide a set of universal ethical principles based on natural law. Beyond the Nuremberg Code and its application to modern medical research ethics, it poses numerous challenges. Many have argued that the Code attempts to cover all unforeseen events, which restricts the researcher by forcing him to anticipate every situation, demanding the impossible. The most important contribution of the Code is the first principle, according to which the voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. The subject concerned must have the legal capacity to give consent, must have free choice, as well as sufficient knowledge and understanding of the experiment. This restricts the populations on which certain experiments can be conducted, as many do not have "legal capacity". For example, studies of mental illness and childhood illness have been curtailed because none of these populations have the legal capacity to provide consent. Another group of people, prisoners, are never truly able to give voluntary consent because they may be lured by financial rewards, special treatment and the hope of early release in exchange for participating in projects. of human experimentation. British biostatician Sir Austin Bradford Hill also questioned whether it was important to inform a research subject who was receiving a placebo since it is... middle of paper ...... such that it was the duty or role of a doctor. act in the best interest of their patient and safeguard people’s health. It was a set of professional guidelines written by doctors for doctors, as opposed to the Code, written by lawyers for use in a legal trial. The Declaration of Helsinki was also a much longer document than the Nuremberg Code and therefore set out more principles and left less room for uncertainty. Both sets of principles are just ethical principles and nothing more. None of them has legally binding authority or means of enforcement. Adequate protection of human research subjects is not guaranteed by these codes, we simply have to trust that they are treated correctly. The Code should be rewritten so that the principles are applied to some extent instead of just hoping that doctors will behave ethically..