Anatomie 2, directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky, is a German film that is a sequel to the director's Anatomie (2000). Both films ask questions about medical ethics by positing the Nazi quest for a master race as an ultimate goal of medical research. When the film begins, Jo Hauser (played by Barnaby Metschurat) challenges Dr. Charles Müller-LaRousse (played by Herbert Knaup) at a public forum, cuts open his own body, and falls to the ground. Then the film flashes back to a day when Hauser says goodbye to his paraplegic brother in Duisberg and travels to Berlin to become an intern at the number one hospital in the country. When he arrives at the ultramodern Berlin Clinic, he meets the nursing staff, which is primarily Filipina, other interns, and the top medical researcher, Dr. Müller-LaRousse. The interns, who are especially friendly, seem eager to reveal that they are self-experimenting with drugs. Although his roommate cautions him, Hauser responds positively to the attention from Dr. Paula Henning (played by Franka Potente), especially one day when she injects something into his bloodstream that enhances his sexual performance. Soon, Hauser is being encouraged to become one of a team of medical researchers headed by Dr. Müller-LaRousse, who seeks the Nobel Prize in medicine by transplanting muscles, which can be operated by the transplant subject as well as by remote control. Hoping that the medical breakthrough will ultimately benefit his paraplegic brother, who is dying of the same crippling ailment that claimed his father, Hauser agrees to become a part of the Anti-Hippocratic Society. After a ceremony in which he is accepted into the Lodge, which is an international cabal of medical researchers who are determined to try anything new and to share the results at secret meetings, he becomes the victim of experimental muscle implants. One day, Dr. Müller-LaRousse decides to begin Phase 2 of the experiments, when human muscles will be removed so that artificial muscles will alone be implanted in the body. Hauser then realizes that the so-called medical research is quackery, as eventually do some others, and there is some considerable suspense about how Hauser escapes from those interns who have been brainwashed to believe in the ultimate success of the experimentation and are prepared to kill him in order to stop him from whistleblowing. As credits rolls, the stage is set for an Anatomie 3. If pressures on medical researchers to find a breakthrough are as depicted in the film, those who are seriously ill should be wary of going to the top medical facilities in the world, where untested drugs or procedures may be tried on unsuspecting patients. MH
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