Should Science Be Allowed To Benefit From Tragedy?

In Psychology in particular, there are rules that are set for very important reasons about what can be experimented on and what can't. People who take part in studies are given so many protections that it's almost impossible to do psychological tests in many areas of interest--which no one is exactly fighting against, considering the alternative. For example, it would be very very interesting to know what would happen to a human who is completely isolated from the very beginnings of life. Would they grow the same, learn the same, think the same? But as interesting as it may be, no one (nowadays, anyway) would ever even think of trying it. The cost to that child's life is far to severe to even consider it for the sake of science.



But what happens when you happen to find a child who fits these qualifications? The case I'm thinking of in particular is that of a girl called Genie (you can read her story at http://www.feralchildren.com/en/showchild.php?ch=genie). Genie was discovered in 1970. She was 13 years old, and had been tied to a potty chair in her basement since she was very young, and had very little human contact. She was about as close as you could get to a completely isolated human. Scientifically, this is just too interesting to pass up. The things we could learn about human development and our capacity to learn are just limitless. But the question is, should we? No scientist set up the situation, that would be unethical, but is it ethical to benefit from her tragedy? 



Now that I think of it, this is kind of the same debate as stem cell research. If you look at it as, the mother made the choice to abort her baby, not the scientist, so shouldn't the scientist be allowed to benefit from that tragedy? The scientist isn't being unethical by being the one to abort the baby (assuming that's really the case), so why is it unethical to benefit from something unfortunate that was going to happen anyway?



The thing about Genie is she was still alive, and could still be harmed by testing done by the scientists. She was not dead, she was not a clump of cells being poked in a lab, she was a living, breathing human. So is it okay to study her? To put her through endless tests for the sake of science?



The real tragedy of Genie's story is that these tests were allowed to be done, for a few years. While she was being tested, the scientists made every attempt to take good care of her, and to create the sort of family bonding that she was missing. She was happy, excited about the world, and eager to learn. The scientists were, too, and they were finding out a lot of interesting things. But then the funding stopped, and people got too worried about this question of whether it's right to test her at all, and so the scientists had to leave Genie. So Genie went to foster homes, where she was again abused, and then she was moved to an adult care home. It seems that people were only concerned with her welfare so long as science was involved.