Have we ever been able to trust scientists’ self control, and in these cases can we trust the results of unethical experiments?
Introduction (335 words):
Authors of the article Document 7, published in The Guardian, discuss the theme of human rights, stating that ‘the self-control of scientists is not enough to protect us, or to secure public trust. National governments must step in.’ The article further suggests that the United States of America should be the first country to implement these changes and get further involved in protecting the safety and the rights of their citizens. The USA is one of several countries that has been involved in breaches of medical ethics (which are the application of morality into practising medicine). These principles have been violated throughout history, with perhaps the most famous example residing Nazi Germany. This poses the question: Have we ever been able to trust scientists’ self control? Even after these experiments take place, can we trust or even ethically use the results of this misconducts of medical principles?
The article’s first author is Filippa Lentzos, a sociologist who specialises in regulation of the biological sciences. As a Senior Research Fellow at King’s College London, a university consistently ranked by Times Higher Education as within the top 40 in the world, and having previous worked at London School of Economics, she is clearly well educated and therefore is a reliable source within the article. Furthermore, another author, life scientist Dr Koos van der Bruggen, has been the secretary of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences’ expert group on biosecurity. This organisation acts as an advisory body to the Dutch government, and are a reputable source of information. For this reason, van der Bruggen is a trustworthy source within this article. Finally, the last author Kathryn Nixdorff, retired professor at Darmstadt University of Technology in Germany, is a researcher focused on microbiology and genetics, the department of which she was a part of at the university. It is regularly ranked in the top 50 universities worldwide, and therefore it can be assumed that Nixdorff is extremely well educated in her field and acts as a respectable source.
UNETHICAL (369 words):
During World War II, prisoners in concentration camps were experimented on by notorious German Nazi doctors. The treatment of prisoners in these camps violated over 5 vital human rights established by the Human Rights Act of 1998. These include the right to freedom of thought, expression and association. The human experiments conducted in the camps were highly unethical, violating Article 3 of the Human Rights Act – freedom from inhuman or degrading treatment and torture, which legally has been defined by the United Nations as “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person”.
The level of inhumane treatment of test subjects during the Holocaust lead to the Nuremberg Trials and in 1947, the Nuremberg Code was established to provide strict guidelines on the circumstances under which crimes committed during human experimentation can be defined. This Code is still followed today and therefore shows the unacceptable nature of the human experimentation that took place in concentration camps. They are still used today to define unethical medical procedures. These extensive provisions to avoid future events similar to the Holocaust provide further evidence that the self-control of the scientists involved was not enough to protect the prisoners inside the concentration camps.
As concluded by The New England Journal of Medicine, Nazi experiments “were in fact brutal crimes committed under the guise of medical research. There is controversy, however about the use of the results obtained from those studies.” Despite this article being outdated, as it was published in 1990, the arguments put forward still reign true, and the journal remains one of the most prestigious journals from its first publication in 1812. It is far simpler to conclude that any breaches of medical ethics are not just immoral but rendered useless, than to consider the other perspective on this issue, which may be just as important. Many people would dismiss these these perspectives before thorough research into the contrasting point of view, but it is particularly useful to compare these as they could argue that the experiments were not a loss of self-control, but simply an unethical way of finding vital information that could not be obtained in any other way.
BODY (579 words)
A strong example of the controversy surrounding these experiments follows: Nazi doctor Sigmund Rascher was made famous by his experiment that took place in Dachau in 1942. The doctor himself was accused of many crimes, including scientific fraud, and was described as inhumane and criminal at the Nuremberg Trials. In his hypothermia experiment, over 200 people were submerged in freezing water for around 5 hours, with doctors monitoring the subject’s heart rates, loss of muscle control and internal temperatures. A headline of 1985 in science journal New Scientist was “Citations of shame”, and the article explores the ethics of relying on the results of Nazi experiments. The magazine is published and highly regarded in the UK, the US and Australia. As the article mentions, over 1 in 4 test subjects died during the Dachau experiment – and yet it has been branded irreproducible and therefore incredibly valuable to the medical world. Scientist John Hayward of the University of Victoria in Canada stated “I don’t want to have to use this data, but there is no other and will be no other in an ethical world.” He was educated in both the University of British Columbia, the number 1 ranked university in Canada, and Harvard University, frequently ranked within the top 5 universities in the world. Furthermore, physiologist Robert Pozos has supported the free use of the experiment results. As a director of hypothermia research at the University of Minnesota, within the top 200 universities in the world, he held the belief that, as a specialist on hypothermia, the use of the Dachau experiment results can save lives now by advancing currently existing research. But surely this poses the question – does saving lives now excuse the deaths of not just this Nazi experiment, but those thousands in similar concentration camps throughout Europe during the war? The New England Journal of Medicine rejected his suggestion to openly publish this data, possibly following in the footsteps of the US Environmental Protection Agency, who considered but declined the use results from Nazi phosgene gas experiments, despite the possibility of saving lives.
However, Dr Lynn Gillam writes in a blog on ethics on the University of Oxford website, “if scientific data is too poor to use, it’s because of poor study design and analysis, not because of the bad moral character of the scientist. And in fact, some of the data from Nazi experiments is scientifically sound enough to be useful.” Although this world renowned university can claim prestige over other sources, the blog is available for anyone to write on and therefore the institution is not necessarily related to the author. Gillam herself is noted as a Clinical Ethicist and an Associate Professor in Health Ethics at the University of Melbourne in Australia. This suggests that the ideas put forward will have been heavily researched prior to writing this post. For this reason, Gillam is a reliable source, and her arguments can be used to counter some of those mentioned previously.
In despite of this, can we conclude that this argument is the only correct option? Both the New England Journal of Medicine and the governmental US Environmental Protection Agency have disregarded the idea of using Nazi experiments to provide evidence for a theory. These highly reputable organisations have influence over both people and other organisations and therefore a responsibility to provide what they deem is the most beneficial outcome. Due to this, the argument against using these unethical experiments can be strongly supported.
Conclusion (224 words):
As implied in the range of nationalities of the source creators, this is a global issue on which most people have formed an opinion before detailed research into both sides of the argument is carried out. I had previously believed that it was purely immoral to use the results of these experiments that were carried out so unwillingly, however I can now see that they may be lifesaving to some people currently alive and suffering. Although my stance on the matter is still against using these experiments, from a medical point of view I can understand the desire to use them as it is the only data that can ever be retrieved in an ethical world as they have already been carried out. I think it is important to find a use for the otherwise pointless experiments, but I think it is more important to respect the loss of lives due to crimes committed during human experimentation in Nazi Germany and to ensure that the use of that data could not encourage future generations to repeat the atrocities in order to find information in the name of science. Although the results may be scientifically trustworthy or reliable, these examples are clear cases in which we could not trust scientists’ self control, and therefore the results of the data they produced should not be used.