1947 August 19 The judges of the American military tribunal in the case of the USA vs. Karl Brandt et. al. (the "Doctors Trial") confront the difficult question of medical experimentation on human beings. Several of the doctors had argued in their own defense that their experiments had differed little from previous American or German experiments. Furthermore they showed that no international law or informal statement differentiated between legal and illegal human experimentation.

Before announcing their verdict, the judges reiterated almost all of the points in Dr. Alexander's memorandum of April 17 in a section entitled "Permissible Medical Experiments," which revised his original six points into ten. Subsequently, these ten points became known as the "Nuremberg Code." Although the code addressed the defense arguments in general, remarkably none of the specific findings against Brandt and his codefendants mentioned the code Thus the legal force of the document was not well established and failed to find a place in either the American or German national law codes. Nevertheless, it remains a landmark document on medical ethics and one of the most lasting products of the "Doctors Trial."