During World War II both the Germans and Japanese experimented on living people.What do you think?

Question

As a civilized society do we use information gathered in this way in an effort to save lives or due to the way the information was gathered do we destroy the data even at the risk of other lives?And would you feel different if it was one of your loved ones who would be helped by this data and how about if one of your loved ones was the victim?

Answer 1

You'd have been better off putting this question in the ethics section than the history one. The range of answers might have been greater.

I'll say this, if your answer is affected by whether a loved one's being hurt or helped by these experiments, then you have no real right to determine whether it's right or wrong. An objective answer has to come from those who are not affected or who can imagine having two loved ones, one on either side.

Answer 2

You just cant compare atrocities - you have to look at who was responsibile and the policies that both Germany and Japan took towards their conquered territories. With the Germans, nazi racial ideology combined with 'lebensraum' or living space. The Germans needed to demonise those races that they deemed to be 'undermenschen' or 'sub-human' by classifying them as enemies of the reich - to be hunted and exterminated. The Japanese were different - the crimes committed by the Japanese in China and throughout South East Asia were driven not only by the elites, but by cultural aspects - the bushido code - a warrior conquering ethic. The Japanese held in complete contempt those people that were weak or cowardly. The Japanese also went into South East Asia claiming that they were liberating Asians from Western colonialism. Like the Nazis who claimed that they were uniting those German minorities who had been separated from Germany under the Treaty of Versailles Where the Nazi leadership was political leadership driven by the National Socialist party and their ideology, the Japanese Government was the Emperor of Japan, the royal family and the Imperial Japanese Government - dominated by the military that strove for the Greatness of Japan and her Emperor. One of the elements in common about the German and Japanese expansion is that they used the perceived weaknesses of the Western powers to carry out their invasions - but at the same time cried foul claiming that the Western powers were in some ways limiting them from becoming equal powers. Where the Nazis had the death camps at Auschwitz etc and made killing people a factory process, Japanese soldiers and commanders took turns at the Nanjing Massacre to see how many heads they could cut off their chinese victims or enjoyed sticking bamboo poles into women's vaginas. You cant compare these inhuman animals for their acts.

Answer 3

I actually recall this very topic being discussed in a class I took in college. The class was about designing social studies and experiments. The professor said that after much debate, people did look at the results of these experiments and came to the conclusion that the data was no good because the researchers made too many mistakes and were not scientific enough in their approach.

Answer 4

Unfortunately,we cannot undo the hurt inflicted on the victims,but since the data is available,it should be used to benefit mankind.In the 1920/30s the Americans experimented on black people in an effort to find a cure for syphilis.

Answer 5

I think that if the benifits outweigh the means then it should be looked at. If the data is good and can be put to good use then it should at least be tried. You can not go back and change the past so we need to move forward. Granted I can not speak for the thousands of people that may have felt the effects.

Answer 6

Medical science has always used live guinea pigs, just look at that recent trial that went wrong, that the victims of the nazis were unwilling doesn't change the facts learned from the experiments, coastguard services already use knowledge gianed from german experiments as to save lives. No matter how it is gained you ca't unlearn knowledge once gained.

Answer 7

I think that the experiment is aready done, why not just use the data and not let the people who was experimented on and died, die in vain. But if my loved ones are the victim, it is most likely that one would feel very angry, even myself, and to think that why should we sacrifice ourselves or our loved one just to save people that i don't even know. And if my loved ones are the ones saved by the data, i would feel happy but still, it is not very good/civilised to sacrifice others.
The most important thing is that the person that is experimented on is willing ( though i don't think they were willing, i don't know) to do that and that data is crucial in saving many people's lives, not just one.

Answer 8

The US took many nazi scientists back and settled them stateside after the war. Some went to New Mexico and others went elsewhere. Hitlers scientists were working on everything from cloning to rocket science, psychic mind control, to drugs that would kill non aryans and even drugs to allow their soldiers to stay awake for weeks at a time and fight like demons. (PCP etc.) about the same time LSD was invented by a German scientist.

Answer 9

What a gruesome way to do scientific research. The data was not destroyed and was used by the scientific community. That will probably be the next evil thing Bush orders done.

Answer 10

It's atrocious. The American government complained bitterly and wanted to put people on trial for doing that.However, from 1947 to 1963, the American government did the same thing. They did drug experiments on unknowing American citizens. Type in L.S.D. experiments on Yahoo search, you'll be surprised if you didn't know this.