What I found most interesting after class this week was all the immoral research that has occurred. I found it fascinating how so many terrible things had happened in the past that I had never even heard of before. Not only did I find it interesting I also couldn’t believe how immoral these experiments were. It seemed to me like they were horror movies that were just made up to scare people.
The Nazi experiments seemed the most horrible to me. The people had no rights. I don’t know how someone could treat another human being in that way. They had to know at some level that what they were doing was morally wrong. Were moral rights and treatments of people different back then? Were they taught that if people were a different race or religion they didn’t have the same feelings?
Another experiment that was interesting to me was the Tuskegee syphilis. This study was morally and ethically wrong. People were just being used. They had no idea what they were being infected with. They just thought that they were being treated for “bad Blood.” They were also told if they participated they would be given free medical care but they didn't have any idea what the trade off was.
After learning about these cases I did wonder how different our knowledge of medicine would have been without them. I don’t think if you had told people the truth they would have ever volunteered to be part of the Tuskegee syphilis so would we know what we do know if that event hadn’t happened. However, let me be perfectly clear that even though the research did benefit our society, it was morally and ethically wrong and should never have been done.
I know what you mean, it's hard to imagine being able to do some of the things those people did, especially the Nazi's. Even on our own home-front with the Tuskegee tests, i don't think i could handle that. I wonder how many in that situation knew what was going on, maybe some of the workers were actually tricked into it and had no idea.
ReplyDeleteNonetheless, throughout all of the harm and morally upsetting instances, i feel in the end some of the results (mind you, only the results) were helpful to our lives now. I feel that in time we could have come up with better, more reasonable ways to achieve similar results, but who knows how long that might have taken.
It also shocked me to hear that experiments like the Tuskegee study happened right in our own free country and not even all that long ago at that. I actually watched a movie for another class about the Tuskegee study called Miss Evers' Boys and it really showed how the workers dealt with the situation of wanting to tell the patients but not being allowed to so that the study would be still be viable.
ReplyDeleteThe whole situation of progress in medicine vs. morality is a tough one I think because the line separating the two can sometimes become very fuzzy. As hard as it is to view past experiments that were not done in moral ways as progressive, I think for the sake of finding cures and such, we should be able to use the data from them.
I also agree that these experiments ever could happen, that it does seem straight out of a horror movie. I knew about the horrible treatment of the Jews at the Nazi camps, but I was unaware of the Tuskegee Study before this class. The point you make up about people not volunteering if they knew the truth, I have to disagree on. I think if people knew the truth about the experiments, I think some people would volunteer. I think of those who would volunteer would be ones who have no other treatment options with their given disease or condition. I just hope that those people who volunteered would be treated in a proper manner and would be told the truth because they did volunteer.
ReplyDeleteIt's so hard to know what do do with the data obtained from these torturous "experiments." On one hand, we want to denounce that these tests and the data obtained from them as complete evil, but on the other hand we want to value the benefit they pose to the medical community. How do we answer the question of what is most respectful to the victims of these experiments?
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