Nelson Mandela, who died Thursday at the age of 95, helped end apartheid in South Africa as an imprisoned activist. As president, he was responsible for helping his country confront and then move beyond the brutality of the apartheid era.
In Nov. 2011, "Sound Medicine" looked at the trial of Wouter Basson, a South African cardiologist and former head of the apartheid government’s chemical and biological warfare program, known as Project Coast.
Basson, who appeared before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission after the discovery of Project Coast, is accused of overseeing the development of chemical and biological weapons that were used against political opposition and of participating in medically-assisted kidnappings and murders.
Host Barbara Lewis and Dr. Eric Meslin, the director of the IU Center for Bioethics, talk with Dr. Steven Miles of the University of Minnesota. He was one of the expert witnesses for the prosecution in the trial of Basson.
Miles is a professor of medicine and bioethics at the University of Minnesota. In addition to his work as an expert on military torture, he has also served as medical officer for the American Refugee Committee on the Thai-Cambodian border, in Sudan, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzogovina, and Indonesia.
