Readers of this site will know that I defend Israel against the lies about it that are daily promulgated by its enemies. Nevertheless, when it does something wrong it should be held to account. A story that has been running this week in the Jerusalem Post fills me with the utmost horror:

'Medical experiments with the lofty aim of improving clinical treatment have been performed in public hospitals around the country on demented, elderly, infant or child patients without them or their guardians giving the required informed consent...The scandalous violations were most flagrant in geriatric, rehabilitation and psychiatric hospitals, where patients are the most incapacitated and unable to look out for their own interests. For example, at the Harzfeld Rehabilitation Hospital, a 101-year-old woman and a 91-year-old woman included in a medical trial signed consent forms without a relative or a legal guardian having signed the form.

'Records showed that in other Harzfeld experiments, seven patients – some of them older than 90 – "signed" consent forms with only their inked fingerprint even though their medical records showed they suffered from serious cognitive deficits (dementia), thus raising the possibility that their fingerprints were taken against their will.

'At Wolfson and Sheba hospitals, a medication not approved for use in any country was tried on infants and toddlers. The experiment required piercing the eardrums of the children, which poses a "small risk for loss of hearing and a large hole in the eardrum." Despite these potential risks, the hospitals' Helsinki committees approved the trials without bringing them to the ministry for approval.

'Kaplan Hospital researchers took urine samples from patients via suprapubic aspiration – painfully drawing it out of the bladder through a needle over the pubic bone – for one of its clinical trials after receiving permission from its Helsinki committee alone.

'It did so even though the application to the hospital Helsinki committee noted that suprapubic aspiration is used only in exceptional circumstances when urine can not be removed conventionally. Such an invasive procedure requires the hospital to apply for permission from the ministry's Supreme Helsinki Committee, but this was not done.'

This is deeply shocking. Medical experiments without consent are unarguably unethical. To conduct such experiments on the most vulnerable patients who for various reasons are incapable of giving that consent is appalling. It violates a fundamental moral code. What's more, this was not a rogue incident. Thousands of people were used in this way in Israeli hospitals. What can explain such a terrible lapse, such a betrayal of ethical codes that are known to doctors throughout the civilised world? And of course, what makes this all the more shocking, what gives it such a ghastly edge, is that it has been happening in Israel of all places, the one country in the world which one would have expected to be particularly sensitive to the singularly dreadful historical resonance of such experimentation.

Not surprisingly, Israelis are said to have been shocked by this revelation. The only good thing about this is that it has been discovered by the State Comptroller, who has severely faulted Israel's health ministry for negligence and carelessness. But this is by no means enough. As Professor Jacques Michel, retired director of Hadassah Hospital, is reported to have said:

'Those doctors who violate the Helsinki Declaration guidelines should be punished. They should have their medical licenses suspended or taken away. Anyone who performs a medical experiment on someone who doesn't or is unable to give his informed consent should be tried for physical assault.'

The rules are apparently now being tightened up. This does not answer the question which demands to be asked: what does this revelation say about the moral health of Israel's culture?