The doctors who are prosecuted are Nazis from Germany who conducted violent medical experiments at concentration camps. Multiple American doctors are involved in the prosecution.

One result of this trial is the Nuremberg Code, which is a set of ethical principles regarding human experimentation. The ten points of the code include, among others: informed consent, absence of coercion, use of proper scientific method, care for the people involved in the experiment, and the purpose of the experiment being the betterment of society. In addition, the code states that human trials must also be preceded by animal and disease studies.

This code raises a red flag for experiments that are already happening on incarcerated people in the U.S. On paper, this international code seeks to end all forced or coercive human experimentation for scientific research, but it continues anyhow and, instead, becomes more hidden.