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"Because we can," ethics in scientific experiments
manwiththemachinegun
METAL GEAR?!Registered User regular
METAL GEAR?!Registered User regular
I was recently made aware of some fairly disturbing scientific experiments.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Demikhov
http://listverse.com/2008/09/07/top-10-unethical-psychological-experiments/
Two headed dogs, attempting to keep severed heads alive, attempted head transplants, dehumanizing participants as study data. Some of these studies were debunked as hoaxes, others however seem to be verified by reliable sources. A lot of it seemed to boil down to, "because we wanted to see if we could do it."
I knew about the Milgram and prison studies. The Milgram experiment proved some fascinating data about how humans can be ordered to hurt or kill other humans. However, it was also judged horrifically immoral and any future attempts to replicate the experiment were banned.
I think we can all agree that things like helping people live longer, discovering new ways to treat mental illness, and finding new ways to treat pain is a good thing. Knowledge in general is good. However, how we reach those results says a lot about us as human beings in my mind. I'm not interested in spamming sideshow horror pictures or videos. It made me ill enough to see it the first time.
Some people seem to have no problem with these sorts of experiments, citing that anything that advances medical science for humans is acceptable. Can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs is the rational. Others feel that there are boundaries that should not be crossed, even if they don't always agree what those boundaries are. That people should have some sense of responsibility for the pain they inflict, whether it's on humans or not.
When does science or otherwise go too far in your mind? If at all? Is there anything that can be done to prevent people from playing God? Or are such feelings just getting the way of "real" progress?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Demikhov
http://listverse.com/2008/09/07/top-10-unethical-psychological-experiments/
Two headed dogs, attempting to keep severed heads alive, attempted head transplants, dehumanizing participants as study data. Some of these studies were debunked as hoaxes, others however seem to be verified by reliable sources. A lot of it seemed to boil down to, "because we wanted to see if we could do it."
I knew about the Milgram and prison studies. The Milgram experiment proved some fascinating data about how humans can be ordered to hurt or kill other humans. However, it was also judged horrifically immoral and any future attempts to replicate the experiment were banned.
I think we can all agree that things like helping people live longer, discovering new ways to treat mental illness, and finding new ways to treat pain is a good thing. Knowledge in general is good. However, how we reach those results says a lot about us as human beings in my mind. I'm not interested in spamming sideshow horror pictures or videos. It made me ill enough to see it the first time.
Some people seem to have no problem with these sorts of experiments, citing that anything that advances medical science for humans is acceptable. Can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs is the rational. Others feel that there are boundaries that should not be crossed, even if they don't always agree what those boundaries are. That people should have some sense of responsibility for the pain they inflict, whether it's on humans or not.
When does science or otherwise go too far in your mind? If at all? Is there anything that can be done to prevent people from playing God? Or are such feelings just getting the way of "real" progress?
manwiththemachinegun on
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Unit 731.
Most of the people responsible were captured after WW2, but were let go in return for their "research".
I had trouble sleeping for days after reading that article.
That... is the most horrifying I have ever read about the Second World War. I just don't have the words.
I don't think the bolded part is actually true. There were ethical objections to the Milgram experiments (as he did more than one, with a bunch of different variations) but I don't think that they qualified as "horrifically immoral" nor would it be illegal to conduct similar experiments.
You make it sound like one directly led to the other and that's ludicrous and not supported by anything I've ever read.
I know, but that doesn't mean that the Milgram experiments were "horrifically immoral" (especially compared to things like the Little Albert experiment), nor would they be illegal to replicate. It'd be difficult to convince an IRB to do so, and there'd be more of a focus on post-study debriefing, but it's not like the concept of deceiving study participants about aspects of a study has been banned.
I believe they altered how the experiments were conducted, you couldn't do it today the same way Milgram did.
I just can't fathom how cutting off a monkey's head, attaching it to another's body, and trying to keep the snarling, desperate wretch alive as long as possible serves anything other than the experimenter's ego.
Even if some great medical advance came from it, would you want it knowing how it was produced? Are the ends justifying in the means in this case? Same for those chemical warfare "experiments", if you can muster the sincerity to call it that, I think that's the key question.
http://www.und.edu/instruct/wstevens/PROPOSALCLASS/MARSDEN&MELANDER2.htm
http://www.daemen.edu/academics/policiesandprocedures/humansubjects/Pages/Definitions.aspx
http://ijire.net/issue_2.1/grimes.pdf
The Belmont Report was birthed from highly publicized experiments and guess what the IRB is based off? The Belmont Report.
I'll post more substantially later today.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Odds seem low, but I can hope right?
Secondly, I'm not sure where I'd draw the line on some of these. A lot of the information we get is extremely useful. "Worth the cost" is very subjective.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
Am I gonna not sleep some more?
Yes, but you have to admit a lot of these experiments, especially the Russian animal replacement ones, were essentially dick waving competitions over which country was better at biology. The benefits, if any, were secondary to "who's the best?" That's not even getting into the ones that were apparently, "for the LULZ."
Even so, you can get very good data out of things like that.
And is it just me, or is that Little Albert one not so bad? Maybe I just really dislike kids.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
The Unit 731 deal should have been "hand over your data and you'll only get life instead of a firing squad."
And then shoot them anyway.
Where do you stop though? While humans eat animals for meat, we also arrest people for cruelty to animals. That's not uncommon. Why do scientists get a free morality pass? Animal testing has been outlawed in some cases, like for cosmetics if I remember correctly.
Not even getting into the controversy of slaughterhouses, most of the animals in these experiments were subjected to horrific agony and a slow, painful death. Even as an American meat eater, I have issues with that sort of thing.
If only that was the case. It's hard to argue against the death penalty for crimes that awful.
Informed consent is a pretty great place to start in my book.
edit:animal experiments don't really have that as an option of course. Undue duress should be avoided.
Animal cruelty is purposeless would seem to be the major difference.
While the acts in wiki article were horrible, they were also described without any real context.
If they contained the purpose, acts and results, and then what new advances that were made using those results (especially ones that couldn't be done without using a technique like that) we probably would have a different view on them.
Or probably not.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
You know we don't get a free pass anymore, right? We would lose our jobs and funding if we tried stuff like that.
Except for that dude who is developing fringe reproductive treatments that are working and also making chimera babies, but no one has publicized him much.
Being cruel for now reason, or bad reasons (saving money, time) is something to be avoided.
But for science? That's where it gets murky. A lot of our experiences is defined by pain (physical and mental), and the easiest way to understand that is to inflict pain in a controlled environment.
Same with medical advances. Seeing how the human body reacts to certain events is extremely useful.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
Most of the top researchers at Unit 731 were granted immunity by the United States for their research, the Soviet Union tried some of them but still used their data to build their biological weapons program. Pretty much none of the people involved in such horrible projects as MK-ULTRA, Project SUNSHINE, and Operation May Day were ever convicted of anything and in a lot of cases people involved in similar experiments went on to keep doing them under government supervision.
Robber's Cave isn't extremely horrible, pretty strange but nothing life threatening. But the Tuskegee Study is downright horrible and had a counterpart in the Guatemalan Syphilis Study of 1946-48, to the point some of the researchers from Guatemala moved to the Tuskegee study afterwards.
The Milgram study alone wasn't the only reason IRBs were developed, but it was a significant proximal cause.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
If that was the case, why have some forms of animal testing been banned? Obviously testing cosmetics on animals has real benefits for humans. So why stop unless it was purely for a moral motive of, "this is wrong, we shouldn't be doing this?"
Stapling a puppy's head to another dog in order to say, "we're the best at science" does not directly equate to research on organ transplants. There are methods of research that would not have involved such a pointless exercise.
The hypothesis was that they could induce a long-term phobia towards small fuzzy animals.
That's pretty fucked up.
Sure, it's not as fucked up as vivisection, but it's still fucked up.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
God dammit. That just ain't right.
I guess the only comfort to be had is that with the development of the internet and information techology, more light can be shed on crimes like this to hopefully bring pressure against them from recurring.
It ain't much, but that's all I got.
Still not seeing it though.
We screw up people like this all the time accidently.
It doesn't seem like it's a life limiting experience.
So surely knowing how we get phobias, and how to prevent/cure them is useful?
Though it looks like he never got around to the curing part.
And to dig my crazy hole deeper. That shocky dog one is interesting. Very sad, but also interesting.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
Yeah, that's sort of my point.
With the Frakenstien stuff, If someone did something like than in a Resident Evil game, most people would be inclined to shoot them in the head. Another experiment was one involving an artificial pump to reanimate a dog's head. That particular experiment is regarded by some as a hoax, as the video itself is a reenactment (A video on Youtube labeled Zombie dog which is what led me into this crapstorm), but it wouldn't surprise me at all if it was actively attempted.
I'm not saying you're bad for finding it fascinating, which it is I suppose in a very clinical way, but I just can't disconnect from the emotional aspect of, "what would that feel like?" "what would that be like?" I just don't find it justifiable. There's enough horrible things in life without trying to purposefully find new ways to make people and animals suffer.
Wait... what?
In the western world, anyway.
We still engage in ethically-questionable research in the third world. Nothing as bad as vivisection, again, but I'm pretty sure that someday mainstream ethics classes and research methods classes will look back on placebo-controlled HIV studies as an example of what not to do.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Well, knowing whether or not humans were susceptible to conditioned responses in the same way that animals were would be pretty important to our understanding of human psychology. Note that the doctor originally had a hypothesized way of removing the phobia too.
So now we can just outsource all our evil medical experiments?
How very modern.
Cause people get squimish.
Also, people are weird about animals.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.