Animal Testing And Ethics

Scientists, when it comes to responsibility, will take credit when something helps people, but not when something kills a lot of people. If people’s tax dollars are paying for something, people do have a right to say what is being done with your tax money. Most scientists, if you ask them, will say that they have ethics. What they usually mean, according to Miller in lecture, is the legal thing. The law simply states what you can or can not do. It is just a piece of paper, more or less. Ethics is deeper than that, ethics and morality regard what you should and should not do. So most scientists follow laws and do not do anything illegal, but when it comes to ethics they will do anything to get research done. One of the big problem is lack of …show more content…
Josef Mengele was found but protected by the United States because he had very valuable research. He was good-looking, normal, and his main drive was intellectual curiosity. Mengele was told that he was able to do anything, and so he did it. That is a problem. Japan did it too in World War II, in unit 731. They were protected again, by the Americans, because they wanted the research. This is part of lack of empathy. A lot of scientists can use this to experiment on animals. Serial killers start out as people who like to hurt animals. Most people do not like animal cruelty. But if it is behind a wall in a lab, it is okay. This is a contradiction in society. Some would argue that the ends justifies the means. The Tuskegee Experiments is known to be an example for the concept of “Rights”. During this experiment, the U.S. Public Health Service took a group of poor black people and used them as guinea pigs in syphilis experiment. They had black doctors and nurses who cooperated for the good of science. They lied to people saying that they had a cure, in order to study them. This is an example of a lack of informed consent. There are many examples of scientists doing this, such as medical experiments. There are also human trials. It is a question of consent. One thing we all notice is that all these scientists say the same thing: “We just wanted to find the results of the experiment. We were just doing science.” These people are normal people, not mentally sick. In human psychology, there is group psychology. When we act in a group, we tend to follow the group. So if everyone is experimenting on humans in a group, you will likely be pulled to follow the group. People also follow authority. “I only work here, my boss was telling me what to do.” There is the bystander effect. People will say, “If I saw someone in danger, I’d help them”, but it is not true. Most people will just look at around and