Science: How far can we go?

It is a known fact that most of the discoveries and inventions we have in the world today were achievable after a series of experiments and trials but what a lot of people don't know is that some of these experiments were unethical and morally wrong. it's quite unsettling how these practices we call unethical today were once acceptable back in the day, I mean, you can just think of the slave trade as an example of some of the things that were acceptable many years ago. It is the same way that many things that are acceptable today will become horrifying in another 50 years, the concept of morality changes every day.

I spent a fair share of my morning researching some of these unethical experiments that were done over the years and one thing I can say is that it was totally repulsive reading about them. I mean, it felt like it was a ranking and as I kept reading, it just kept getting worse. From deliberately infecting people with malaria to the experimental atrocities conducted by mad Nazi scientists in Jewish concentration camps, it was like reading a chapter from the 9 tortures of hell. Just googling "unethical science experiments done over the years" will give you an exhaustible list of these experiments.

If you can stomach all that horror, you can go ahead and read about them on this website that discusses the top 10; 10 Outrageous Experiments Conducted on Humans. That's just the ones done on humans, we haven't even talked about the ones done on animals or you didn't know that unethical experiments can also apply to animals? Well, you can also look that up and even though many people might say "they are just animals", you will probably have a changed mindset when you have read about some of these horror shows termed experiments. Most of these experiments actually did produce important findings that are benefitting the world today, even though the process of achieving them was horrific.

The Nazi's experiments showed the limits of human survival and produced valuable medical data, but of course that meant that humans were subjected to those limits and many lost their lives. Even the experiments that failed also produced important findings, and the finding is basically just "Don't ever do this, it doesn't work" which was the conclusion of Wendell Johnson's experiment when he tried to induce stuttering in normally fluent children (it didn't work! Obviously). Some of the things that made most of these experiments unethical were that the subjects didn't even know what they were getting into in the first place, didn't know they were part of an experiment or were forcefully experimented on, and that's even ignoring the fact that some of them are torture.

The Nazi's experiments were so horrible that they eventually led to the creation of the first ethical rules of scientific experiments (the Nuremberg Code). Do you know how bad something has to be for people to come together and create guidelines? That's how bad the Nazi experiments were. One thing you will realize with most of these unethical experiments is that they are biological which makes sense because to test most biological theories, you need live specimens. Of course, animals are mostly used these days but at one point you're going to need humans, especially if you're working on something that benefits humans. One example is Elon Musk's brain chip technology (neuralink).

For years they have been experimenting on monkeys but it was just recently that human trials started, after the FDA approved it last year. That is just a reflection of how experiments are done these days as there are now a lot of regulations governing it. People now have to give their consent first before experiments can be carried out on them and that is even after getting approval from the government but even the government aren't innocent when it comes to unethical experiments, considering how one of the most unethical experiments in history was done by the CIA (project MKUltra). Those experiments I mentioned earlier were the ones known publicly but what about the hidden ones?

I'm sure many unethical experiments have been done (and are still currently being done) that the public doesn't know about. I wouldn't want to open a Pandora's box of conspiracies but there are lots of conspiracy theories online about all these and one thing I know about conspiracy theories is that some of them turn out to be true. It's safe to say that I'm never going to be in support of those past unethical experiments if they were to happen today and you probably wouldn't too. But here is what I'm thinking; what if you find yourself in a life-and-death situation and a scientist offers you a way out that involves secret unethical experiments on humans, would you go ahead?

At that point, the lines of morality become greyed out and many people would probably take up the scientist's offer. That is mostly the basis of most of those unethical experiments; the desperation for fast results. Mix that with the unquenchable thirst for groundbreaking discoveries and you will have yourself a team of scientists ready to push the boundaries of ethical conduct. I know many people's answer to the question I asked earlier is that they will never take part in an unethical experiment even in a life-and-death situation.

It's easy to make such decisions now when you are not in that situation, but that answer might probably change when you are face to face with that circumstance. We never really know what we are capable of until we have found ourselves in specific situations, that's why I can't even answer my own question because I have seen how quickly humans change when faced with dire conditions. In the end, I agree that there should be a limit to how far science should go but with the way things are going, it's like we keep extending that limit every day.

Thanks for reading

This is my entry for June Inleo Prompt, day 9. Come be a part of this awesome daily prompt by clicking on this link.

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