Comment on Least extreme biophysics phd

AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

• AnyOldName3@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  It depends on the specifics of the experiment. Throughout the 20th century, the people most keen on unethical medical experiments seemed the least able to design useful experiments. Sometimes people claim that we learned lots from the horrific medical experiments taking place at Nazi concentration camps or Japanese facilities under Unit 731, but at best, it’s stuff like how long does it take a horribly malnourished person to die if their organs are removed without anaesthesia or how long does it take a horribly malnourished person who’s been beaten for weeks to freeze to death, which aren’t much use.

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  • Grimpen@lemmy.ca ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I’m pretty sure that 80% if what we learned from the Nazi/Imperial Japan super unethical experiments was “what can a psychotic doctor justify in order to have an excuse to torture people to death.”

    Maybe 20% was arguably useful, and most of that could have been researched ethically with other methods.

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  • Comrade_Spood@slrpnk.net ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    The potential value to the Americans of Japanese-provided data, encompassing human research subjects, delivery system theories, and successful field trials, was immense. However, historian Sheldon H. Harris concluded that the Japanese data failed to meet American standards, suggesting instead that the findings from the unit were of minor importance at best. Harris characterized the research results from the Japanese camp as disappointing, concurring with the assessment of Murray Sanders, who characterized the experiments as “crude” and “ineffective.”

    en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731

    To back up your point that the research gained by unit 731 was useless.

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  • Pregnenolone@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    “People die if you kill them”

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    • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      “we weren’t sure, but now we know for a fact”

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  • comfy@lemmy.ml ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    This one was making a child with an HIV-positive parent resistant to HIV, so it’s a bit better than 731 torture.

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    • I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      It’s crazy that people are trying to make this comparison. They are worlds apart. Notice how the post and most people talking about it aren’t discussing what he actually did? Because the situation gets a lot murkier when you learn the details.

      “Experimenting on babies” - What?! That’s unethical and immoral! Must be junk science with no benefit!

      “Made babies at risk of HIV immune to it” - Well… That’s good for the babies, but maybe he should have gone through proper channels.

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• ricecake@sh.itjust.works ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Eh, usually less than you would expect. We’re really good at math and are quite capable of making synthetic experiments where we find people who either require the procedure, or where it’s been done incidentally and then inferring the results as though deliberate.

  We can also develop a framework for showing benefit from the intervention, perform the intervention ethically, and then compare that to people who didn’t get the intervention after the fact. With proper math you can construct the same confidence as a proper study without denying treatment or intentionally inflicting harm.

  It’s how we have evidence that tooth brushing is good for you. It would be unethical to do a study where we believe we’re intentionally inflicting permeant dental damage to people by telling them not to brush for an extended period, but we can find people who don’t and look at them.

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  • AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    The current context is modifying babies to make them HIV resistant. How would you model something similar without performing the experiment?

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