2026 Lawyers of Conscience CLE
Medicine and the Holocaust: The Development of Informed Consent.
Members of the Florida Bar are invited to join The FHM for a compelling three-hour CLE seminar. This program explores the historical development of informed consent, rooted in the medical experiments of the Holocaust, and examines its critical importance in legal and medical ethics today.
- CLE Credits: 3.5 Total (3.5 General, 1.5 Ethics)
- Keynote speaker: Dr. Matthew Wynia. Panel discussion facilitated by Josh Magidson, Esq., Mark McLaughlin, Esq., and Andrew Sasso, Esq.
The Program
There will be three discussions led by experts in the field:
- Medicine, Nazism and the Holocaust: How Healers Became Killers led by Dr. Matthew Wynia explains the context in which medical involvement in Nazism and the Holocaust arose.
- The Nuremberg Medical Trial and Research Ethics: Pervasively Influential – Frequently Ignored led by Dr. Matthew Wynia will explore in more detail the types
of experiments that took place under Nazi Germany. - Lastly, a panel discussion will be led by Josh Magidson, Esq., Mark McLaughlin, Esq., and Andrew Sasso, Esq., about legal and medical ethics of informed consent.
Supporting Sponsor
Macfarlane Ferguson & McMullen
Informed Consent
The development of this concept evolved out of the atrocities committed in the medical experiments conducted by the Nazi regime during the Holocaust. The Nuremberg Code, stemming from the Nuremberg Trials after WWII, established guidelines for human experimentation. The key principles of the code comprise the following:
Voluntary Consent – Individuals must freely consent to participate in research, without coercion or duress.
- Purpose and Benefits – Research should be designed to yield results for the good of society, with benefits justifying risks.
- Avoiding Harm – The experiment should be conducted to avoid unnecessary physical and mental suffering or injury.
- Qualified Personnel – Experiments should be conducted only by scientifically qualified persons.
Our Presenters
Josh Magidson, Esq. is a litigation attorney at the firm of Macfarlane, Ferguson & McMullen. Mr. Magidson’s primary area of practice is civil trial work, with extensive work in commercial cases, and probate, estate and trust litigation. He has experience in handling federal civil rights cases involving first amendment issues and local municipal ordinances which he successfully litigated before the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Matthew Wynia, MD, MPH is Board certified in Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases, with additional training in public health and health services research. He has worked nationally and internationally on issues related to professionalism and the social roles of physicians, including the roles of health professionals in the Holocaust and the contemporary implications of this legacy. He has led national projects on medicine and the Holocaust, professionalism in medicine and public health, ethics in wartime, truth and racial reconciliation in medicine, and more.
Dr. Wynia currently leads the University of Colorado’s Center for Bioethics and Humanities, where the Holocaust, Genocide and Contemporary Bioethics program spans all health science training programs and all four campuses.