Unethical Studies
Brianna Hogan
Oct. 16, 2013
Psychology
Surgical Experiments
Throughout the 1840’s on the east coast of the United States, J. Marion Sims, “the father of Gynecology” performed surgical experiments on enslaved African women who were suffering from fistula problems, against their will, without any anesthesia. That is a very painful procedure to go through with unclean tools and no medicine to ease the pain. Only one out of thirty patients survived. In order to test one of his theories about the causes of trismus I infants he used shoemaker tools to move around skull bones in unborn babies. This is unethical because it killed many women and harmed their unborn babies. It was kind of like an abortion but not taking the baby out and not numbing you. He later perfected the experiment and then tried it on Caucasian women with anesthesia. This is not an experiment that can be repeated now because that is human cruelty. It took slaves because back then they were not considered people and it was ok. It is not fair that people had to go through these procedures with this “doctor”. Why didn’t anybody step in to stop what was going on before so many people died? It seems like the scientific world is much different from the real world because this would never happen in the real world. There are new guidelines that scientists have to follow in order to conduct an experiment. If medicine was given to these women before they went through with the procedure and it wasn’t against their will then it would be ok. Some scientists have taken the unethical studies to a whole new extreme and this is one of them.
Oct. 16, 2013
Psychology
Surgical Experiments
Throughout the 1840’s on the east coast of the United States, J. Marion Sims, “the father of Gynecology” performed surgical experiments on enslaved African women who were suffering from fistula problems, against their will, without any anesthesia. That is a very painful procedure to go through with unclean tools and no medicine to ease the pain. Only one out of thirty patients survived. In order to test one of his theories about the causes of trismus I infants he used shoemaker tools to move around skull bones in unborn babies. This is unethical because it killed many women and harmed their unborn babies. It was kind of like an abortion but not taking the baby out and not numbing you. He later perfected the experiment and then tried it on Caucasian women with anesthesia. This is not an experiment that can be repeated now because that is human cruelty. It took slaves because back then they were not considered people and it was ok. It is not fair that people had to go through these procedures with this “doctor”. Why didn’t anybody step in to stop what was going on before so many people died? It seems like the scientific world is much different from the real world because this would never happen in the real world. There are new guidelines that scientists have to follow in order to conduct an experiment. If medicine was given to these women before they went through with the procedure and it wasn’t against their will then it would be ok. Some scientists have taken the unethical studies to a whole new extreme and this is one of them.