At the mention of human experimentation, one can often experience an immediate shiver shoot down one’s spine. The concept of experimentation, in one sense, should be relieving. Our society has harnessed science as a way to alter nature--improving and extending lives on the way. However, when I read the title to WRI 167: The Ethics of Human Experimentation, my mind jumped to a very ominous and sinister place. After reading numerous books regarding the Holocaust and Nazi experimentation, particularly Night by Eli Wiesel, linking research and human torture came too easily for me.
I bring this topic up because of the recent debate on whether using the data discovered from the German experiments is ethically sound. I firmly believe that the only thing worse than what these victims have been through would be if after these atrocities, the world accepted the trials as valuable. With the use of the data from the World War II “experiments”, the scientific community would be acknowledging the horrific crimes as positive in some way. To use data from their research is to establish redeeming qualities from the horrors of the Holocaust. It is to belittle the agonizing experience of the victims.
In recent historical studies, it has been determined that the Nazi doctors did not simply succumb to the authority of Adolf Hilter’s party, but in fact, these doctors were “active and responsible agents committed to hygienic theories with roots in Social Darwinism” (Post 42). These doctors were subhuman-- lacking any thread of moral decency or compassion. Once their research is distinguished as in any way worthwhile, the scientific world is losing a vital and necessary idea--the idea that the patients’ individual well-being is the most important thing.
These “patients” were murdered and brutally exploited. With the modern world giving positive distinction to the trials, we are simply reopening the victims’ wounds. Science must have a heart, or else the Earth will come significantly closer to another Holocaust. We must hold tightly onto the Nuremberg Code, the Declaration of Helsinki, and the Belmont Report by rejecting all findings that deviate from these honor systems.
Resources relevant to my post:
http://www.ushmm.org/research/doctors/Nuremberg_Code.htm
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/naziexp.html
Stephen G Post, The Echo of Nuremberg: Nazi data and ethics
(Case Western Reserve University, Ohio, USA)
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More than the Ethics, the Science
I agree that the experiments that the Nazis conducted on individuals in the concentration camps were unethical due to lack of informed consent (or any consent at all) from their experimental subjects and the lack of knowledge and concern, about the risks toward the experimental subjects. In effect, the motive behind the experiments did not include the wellbeing of the experimental subjects.
However, despite the unethical quality of these experiments, I was going to argue (before reading more information on these experiments) that the data should be available for use by doctors and researchers. For example, it is very difficult for doctors and researchers to study the effects of hypothermia and how best to treat it. The only data that is available is from the Nazi experiments. If the Nazi data could help save lives today, I would advocate its use. In fact, I believe that it would be unethical to not use valid data that could save lives today.
Having said all of this, I am not, in fact, in favor of the Nazi data being used today. The data does not seem to be scientifically sound and it is unclear as to whether the results were accurately recorded. Some suggest that the doctors were forced by a figure higher up in status to come up with strong, definite, results quickly. Thus, it has been speculated that some of the results may be fabricated. In any case, it has been revealed that much of the data is inconsistent and contradictory within the same report.
Thus, while I do not so much disagree with the use of the Nazi data for ethical reasons, I do think that potentially unscientific data should not be used to try to treat patients today. It is not worth the risk of developing potentially harmful treatments by using flawed data.
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