The Doctors’ Trial was the first major postwar prosecution of doctors for Nazi human experimentation.
Officially called United States of America v. Karl Brandt et al., the case was held at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg from 9 December 1946 to 20 August 1947. Twenty-three defendants, including physicians and administrators, were tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Seven defendants were acquitted, while seven received death sentences.
The trial produced the Nuremberg Code, a set of principles emphasizing voluntary consent and other safeguards in human research. The code was not itself a statute, but it became an important foundation for later medical ethics. The case was one of the twelve subsequent Nuremberg trials, not the first trial of the leading Nazi officials.