Advances in medicine make it possible to save a lot of human lives, but there are times when medical scientists, hoping for a revolutionary breakthrough in their industry, direct their forces against considerations of medical ethics. More recently, the American government officially apologized to Guatemala for medical experiments conducted there in the 40s of the last century on the mentally ill and prisoners who were sick with syphilis. At the time, the Guatemalan project gained a reputation as one of the most brutal medical experiments. Now we will give data on the most terrible experiments on humans in the world history of mankind.
Medical experiences of Nazi Germany
The experiments of the notorious SS doctor Josef Mengele, which he conducted in the Auschwitz camp, received the greatest fame of all times and peoples. According to eyewitnesses, the head physician of Birkenau Josef Mengele himself personally came to meet the trains with prisoners of war. He specially selected the twins. Mengele was especially interested in them. Needless to say, most of them died during such experiments. Also, the "fanatic doctor" has collected a whole collection of eyes from "patients" who died. The Nazis also used prisoners to test new methods of treating infectious diseases and chemical weapons. For aviation "needs" the prisoners were placed in pressure chambers or taken out into the cold. A huge number of prisoners were castrated or sterilized - of course, without painkillers. One prisoner was tied with a wire chest,to find out how long her newborn baby can starve. As a result, the mother, in order to save her child from further torment, injected him with morphine. Some of the fanatical doctors who committed such atrocities were convicted as war criminals. However, the doctor Mengele managed to escape from the court to Brazil, where he died of a stroke in 1979.
Detachment 731 Japan
In the 30s and 40s of the last century, the imperial Japanese army conducted a number of medical and biological experiments in China. Exactly how many of the experimental subjects died as a result of such experiments, it was not known for certain, however, presumably - about 200 thousand. There is evidence that the "experimenters" transported fleas infected with typhus and plague to the cities of China, and water sources were "treated" with cholera vibrios. The prisoners were forced to stay in the cold for a long time, in order to then test methods of treatment for frostbite on them, they were dismembered without painkillers, kept in pressure chambers until the experimental eyes popped out, and also exposed to poisonous gases. The US government after the war helped the Land of the Rising Sun keep these experiments secret,in order to enlist Japan's support in the Cold War.
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Study of Freaks
Defectologists at the University of Iowa in 1939 decided to provide evidence for their theory that stuttering is not a congenital trait, but an acquired one, which is caused by the child's fear of talking. Although the method of struggle they chose was not entirely adequate: the experimenters told orphans that they would always stutter. The subjects of such a cruel experiment were the inhabitants of an orphanage. These were the children of sailors and soldiers who had perished in Ohio. The fiends told the children that they all allegedly stutter and that they shouldn't talk until they were completely sure that they could say "the right way." The experimenters did not succeed in provoking stuttering, but those children who still spoke normally became nervous and silent and closed in on themselves. Future pathology experts called this experience "Monster Studies." Three test subjectswho survived sued the University and Iowa. Four years later, they were paid $ 925,000 in compensation.
Hale and Burke's death
Until 1830, anatomists could only experiment on the corpses of murderers who were sentenced to death. Since it was very difficult to get a corpse "by legal means", most anatomists bought them from grave robbers or went "hunting" themselves. The owners of the Edinburgh boarding house William Hale and his friend William Burke managed to reach new heights in such a "business": they killed the guests of the boarding house, and then their bodies were sold to anatomist Robert Knox. Apparently, Knox did not see (or even did not want to see) that the corpses he was buying were absolutely whole and fresh. During 1827-1828, Hale and Burke killed more than a dozen people. Some time later, Burke was sentenced to death by hanging, and then the government of England liberalized legislation regarding trepanation of human bodies.
Surgeon experimenting on slaves
The founder of modern gynecology, James Marion Sims, became world famous for carrying out experimental operations on his three slaves. They suffered from vesico-vaginal fistulas - fistulas between the bladder and the vagina. Until now, Sims is considered a very controversial "experimenter". Firstly, he is considered the founder of operative gynecology and is the designer of some gynecological instruments that doctors still use in their practice. Secondly, he performed his operations without pain relievers. Sims was confident that the operations he performed were not so painful for the sake of healing. Moreover, at that time, anesthesia was just beginning to emerge. It is fair to say that at the end of the course of operations, all the slaves recovered completely and were later released. In addition, two of them even gave birth to children.
How syphilis was studied in Guatemala
During 1946-1948, the governments of Guatemala and the United States funded research aimed at studying the development of sexually transmitted diseases and determining the effectiveness of the treatment provided. The mentally ill and prisoners became the guinea pigs. They were infected with syphilis. The methods of infection were as follows: they were forced to have sexual intercourse with infected prostitutes or they were applied to a previously scratched genital organ of the syphilis bacteria. Those who eventually became infected were treated with penicillin. There is no information about the further fate of the participants in the barbaric experience. In October 2010, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton officially apologized to Guatemala for the 60-year-old experiments.
Experiments on syphilis in Tuskegee
The longest human experience lasted 40 years. The Ministry of Health in 1932 began a program to study the effects of syphilis. Unfortunately, the participants in the program were engaged exclusively in observations. The "volunteers" were doomed. Experimenters in Alabama monitored the development of the disease in 399 black men exclusively. Along the way, they were reassured by the fact that they were being treated for "bad blood." As it turned out, there was no talk of treatment. In addition, at the end of the 40s, syphilis was successfully treated with penicillin. Only in 1972, the experiment was closed due to a journalistic investigation.