In this issue, I'm going to cover a much darker subject than I have in the past. For some time now, I have heard many people boycott certain companies because they participated in some way in the Holocaust. For instance, Volkswagen may be boycotted because it was a company that Hitler founded. Some are more insidious, though; Bayer may be boycotted because they 'bought' human subjects from the Nazis for their drug trials.
This all got me to thinking; there was a great deal of scientific experimentation done during the Holocaust, largely on the victims themselves. The Nazis were often ruthless in these experiments, killing the subjects for apparently no reason. Very, very few people will ever say that these experiments were good, especially since they go completely against the modern ideas of informed consent.
However, this, and other less than ethical experiments have give us some amazing insight into how the human body works under different conditions. For instance, Edward Jenner, the man famed with discovering the connection between smallpox and cowpox, deliberately infected a young boy with cowpox, followed by a deadly strain of smallpox. This would not be ethical in today's society, because the boy could have died. Yet, without this experimentation, it would have been much more difficult to discover the secrets to vaccination. There are many more instances of this experimentation, even in our own history here in the US.
The Nazis performed many different types of experiments in the concentration camps, using the prisoners as the subjects. These experiments included those on hypothermia and its treatment, genetics (particularly of twins), high-altitude falls, making drinkable seawater, and testing the effectiveness of vaccines and drug treatments to any number of diseases (including tuberculosis, malaria, typhus, typhoid fever, yellow fever, etc).
Sulfa drugs, which are now used for diabetes, were discovered around this time and were tested for effectiveness in treating war wounds. A large chunk of our knowledge of hypothermia comes directly from this horrible research.
So, here's the dilemma. Most people now condemn the Nazis for what they did. Any attempt to bring to light some of the good they did is instantly dismissed or condemned because of the horrors they did do... in bringing to light the good they did, the bad seems much diminished. Yet, we did benefit from this horrible experimentation. Should we throw out that research just because it was committed in the most atrocious way imaginable?
However horrible the Holocaust was, it was not alone in this aspect. There are countless instances throughout history of scientists harming other humans in an effort to advance science. Sometimes they succeed, and sometimes they don't. Obviously, we shouldn't allow this practice to continue, but should we accept the results of the experiments?
Nazis (and WWII Japanese) did some heinous s*** but a cure's a cure. Whats controversial is how we let the scientists who did this go free in exchange for showing us their results. Can knowledge outweigh justice? I think so.
To clarify, the Allies ended the atrocities, then traded amnesty for research findings. A high price in suffering had already been paid by 'unfortunate' Jews, POW's, etc. Is it more important to punish the researchers or secure life-saving knowledge? Either way something mind-blowingly messed up is going on.
who have had little to no human contact also provide us with a lot of information regarding the impact of human interaction on child development, and primal human behavior that results.
Scientists have to wait to find these rare cases in order to glean the information, since it is unethical to conduct experiments where we isolate and ignore children.
No one is happy to discover such a real-life case, but when it is discovered, the best we can do is learn everything we can about it.
Just another example of how horrific human behavior does result in information.
Yes, the price we paid for such information was much too high, and in my opinion, not worth the sacrifice. Personally, I would exchange all of the information gathered for the lost life of one child in the concentration camps.
That is not possible. So we must do the best we can with the remnants of such evil.
Lest we forget though, Dr. Josef Mengele is perhaps the most evil man ever to have lived. His "experiments" provide us with little more than astonishment at how evil a person can be, and when unquestioned, powerful:
"In order to determine if eye color could be genetically altered, Mengele had dye injected into the eyes of several twin subjects. This always resulted in painful infections, and sometimes even blindness. If such twins died, Mengele would harvest their eyes and pin them to the wall of his office, much like a biologist pins insect samples to styrofoam. Young children were placed in isolation cages, and subjected to a variety of stimuli to see how they would react. Several twins were castrated or sterilized. Many twins had limbs and organs removed in macabre surgical procedures that Mengele performed without using an anesthetic. Other twins were injected with infectious agents to see how long it would take for them to succumb to various diseases.
It is clear that, despite the stated purpose for which he was sent to Auschwitz, Mengele's experimentation had absolutely nothing to do with true scientific research, and was instead the result of one man's ambitious and zealous adherence to the Nazi vision of Aryan supremacy. As surviving Mengele subject Alex Dekel states:
I have never accepted the fact that Mengele himself believed he was doing serious work — not from the slipshod way he went about it. He was only exercising his power. Mengele ran a butcher shop — major surgeries were performed without anesthesia. Once, I witnessed a stomach operation — Mengele was removing pieces from the stomach, but without any anesthetic. Another time, it was a heart that was removed, again, without anesthesia. It was horrifying. Mengele was a doctor who became mad because of the power he was given. Nobody ever questioned him — why did this one die? Why did that one perish? The patients did not count. He professed to do what he did in the name of science, but it was a madness on his part."
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/history/mengele/resear...
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This Mengele guy sounds like the serial killer of a slasher movie.
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You know, right after I finished writing this (well, not right after, but a couple hours removed...), I read an article about how this one town in Brazil has a huge concentration of twins... like 36 sets of twins in a population of 100 or something. Some believe Mengele had something to do with it, because he fled to Brazil following the end of WWII.
~C
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That's interesting.
But I wonder how one man could influence the increased amount of twin births?
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and he focused on twins. He also performed sterilization and artificial insemination on some of his subjects.
He was a disgusting example of a human being.
Sadly, he died before being brought to trial for anything. He actually had Nazi supporters that helped him hide in Brazil.
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It's a difficult subject, but it sure makes me think.
I do think we should accept the information taken from these tests, even if the tests were of a barbaric and morally gray nature. I just wouldn't want that fact to induce more ethically wrong practices in order to obtain information.
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I need some more input from y'all here in this forum topic: A ProgressiveU Radio Show/Podcast
I think this is an idea that can improve the ProgressiveU community.