Human Experimentation

Something that I want to cover here is the idea of ethical morality towards prisoners of war. When Ishii started to do his experimentation, he started on his work on prisoners that were already set to be executed without trial. The only argument that can be made as to how this type of experimentation could be remotely ethical comes from the idea of deserving. According to utilitarian thinking, these people don’t deserve the “good” and thus can be used in order to advance research that will maximize a greater “good” for the rest of the people. In this case the “good” that these prisoners would have received was going to be direct execution instead of experimental torture. The best argument against the morality of human experimentation would probably be presented by Kantian thinking. This would entail that any rational being should never be used as a means for maximizing good. Tsuchiya quoted one of the researchers Shiro Kasahara who had written a paper about identifying pathogens of a type of fever. The quote “’The first ape became feverish with a temperature of 39.4 degrees Celsius on the 19^th after injection and moderately affected’” shows that the researchers would ignore the fact that they were testing on other humans (35). The idea that they were afraid to mention working on humans shows that those involved in the research were prone to understanding ethical behavior towards other human beings. The evidence for the immorality of human experimentation is built in with the testimonies that were presented within the article.