Experiments Which Should Have Never Taken Place Bad experiments involving humans have been happening probably forever. It amazes me how a scientist can do some of the things they have without regard for human life in many cases. Sometimes they do terrible things to others and even kill people just to observe them. Other times they tinker with human cells mixing them with plant and animal cells in their quest to create some new creature. One experiment I just heard about I thought was so wrong. It was an experiment where scientists were taking monkey embryos and mixing them with human cells. Maybe some of you out there will think I am old fashioned when I say this, but I can’t believe God would ever want to see experiments like this. Even for an atheist this seems to be something which would be unethical. Scientists are claiming this could someday help to cure disease. This reminds me again of when scientists started to grow human brains in a dish. I condemned this thinking this could be extremely cruel if the brains ever got to a point they could feel. Scientists said this would never happen, but not long after, other scientists became worried about this and some thought the micro brains were becoming aware of pain and also condemned the experiments. Is the next thing which is going to happen is grow a monkey human because “it somehow might become useful in the future?” Many countries have a record of conducting unethical experiments including unfortunately America. It just goes to show some in the scientific community had no conscience and looked at the suffering of others with distain. As bad as we were the Germans and Japanese took their experiments to new bloody heights. Who could ever forget what happened in German and Japanese concentration camps? The Germans thought of their prisoners as sort of a class of sub-humans who were there to be killed anyway so they figured why not experiment on them. One of the experiments subjected people to extreme cold and then would try and warm them up and perform the experiment again to see how long it would take for them to die. The Japanese were infamous for conducting experiments on the Chinese. They didn’t even call them people but logs. They would perform an experiment on them and then cut them open while they were alive and remove their organs. After the war the Japanese doctors doing this tried to defend this by saying they couldn’t give them anesthetic because it would ruin the result. Man’s inhumanity to man can sometimes be unbelievable. Today things are more about creating a chimera. A chimera is a living animal which is composed of two or more different species. The embryos I spoke about were chimeras. A few years ago, scientists introduced human stem cells into a pig embryo. The scientists claim this was done to see if human organs could be grown in an animal and they had decided between a pig and a cow and felt the pig was closer to us biologically. I am all for saving people’s lives who need organs, but I have to wonder about this method. Could we be making the pig too human like in the long run just to be slaughtered? Scientists would probably say I am being ridiculous but stem cells can become almost anything in the human body and if some got into a pig’s brain could they make it more aware. This reminds me of the book Animal Farm where the animals were chimeras and could talk. Another means being worked on for growing organs is lab grown organs. The process is quite complicated so I won’t go into it, but the organs can be de-cellularised and then re-cellularised with the cells from the person who will receive it so it won’t be rejected by their body. Many believe this is where we should be putting our major research. If we could perfect this technique, then maybe we could create an organ bank which would be available to everyone. If we could get rid of the rejection factor it would make organ transplants such a better procedure. People who receive organs usually have to take medication for the rest of their lives. These drugs have side effects as do all drugs. Doctors think they might have found a way for recipients of kidneys to get off of drugs in the future, but it is too early to tell. Some of the doctors we hold in high esteem today have a past which is not usually talked about. Take Sigmund Freud. Just about everyone will recognize that name. He is one of the most famous psychiatrists that ever lived. The question is, was he above performing experimentation that hurt his patients? He had a patient named Emma Echstein, who was said to have come to him for treatment for a stomach ailment and slight depression. According to a recount of his treatment he decided to treat her for hysteria and excessive masturbation which was considered dangerous to one’s mental health. He decided surgery was necessary. It seems he was experimenting with her. It was said he gave her a local anesthetic and some cocaine and then proceeded to cauterize the inside of her nose. One can only imagine the pain she went through. He treated her for three years. One has to wonder what the inside of her nose had to do with her condition? Anyone who has seen the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest or read the book knows how horrible electroshock therapy is. In the 1960s a doctor at Creedmoor Mental Hospital decided she would like to try it on children with social issues. She had used it on over one hundred children, the youngest being three years old before she was shut down. Your heart has to go out to these children who were tortured by this doctor. You also have to wonder how this could have been allowed in the first place. I am sure the doctor had to get permission from someone before she did this. In 1939 the University of Iowa was involved in a stuttering experiment which was conducted on 22 orphan children. The children had been broken into two groups. The first group received positive reinforcement and were praised for their speech. The second group received negative comments and were picked on for every mistake in their speech. The first group of children grew up without a problem, but the second group of children had speech problems for the rest of their lives. Talk about cruelty to children.
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