Half Pint
TokyoPewPew
MaksartIf somehow you're able to refuse these points of mine, then I will accept that I'm wrong in thinking this way.
Let's give it a shot.
Your mentality is exactly what I'm talking about. You argue how these experiments would be a violation of their rights. "Who are we to conduct such experiments on them if we wouldn't to ourselves?"
Basically thats just self-gratification.
Not at all. The reason we wouldn't conduct such experiments on ourselves is that they're unsafe (you mentioned up to a 90% risk threshold earlier -- that's a 1-in-10 chance of success with a person's life). Gratification doesn't enter the thinking at all -- that's objectively a terrible standard, and if you can get someone to agree on those terms, it can only be via manipulation ("You're dead anyway") or compulsion ("Well I brought a gun, so do it").
Some people are born in shittier standards and others are born with a silver spoon in their mouth. What might sound like a horrible offer to you is a wonderful offer to them.
Also known as exploitation or, in this case, something closer to genocide.
Your logic is warped when you realize all the people against these experiments due to 'ethics' don't give two shits when the headlines are about how children are starving in Africa or in Timor-Leste.
That's clouding your judgment. This is what's known as ad-hominem, and it clouds arguments by mixing in personal reactions where logic should be. I don't care that it's a logical fallacy, what matters is, it sounds like this, to you, is demonstrating that 'well therefore their argument holds no weight at all.' That's simply not the case. For instance, Hitler was all about human experimentation on the underclass, and that has nothing at all to do with the merits of your idea. Separate that emotion out. It's poison.
I can give you a much brighter example of what you're advocating. I have a friend who hates to share leftovers. She absolutely refuses to let anyone touch her leftovers because she doesn't like the idea of it. She said it feels like she's giving people shit she wouldn't want. That she wouldn't want people to offer her leftovers either. Thats you right now, basically you're against the whole idea of risky human experiments because you would never want someone to do that risky experiment on you.
But that logic doesn't necessarily apply to me. See, I'm hungry and I have no issues with eating that half eaten slice of pizza. But she won't let me because she doesn't like the idea of someone eating her leftovers. Thats self-gratification.
I wouldn't want them to do it on me because it's unsafe. I don't want them to do it to other people because it's also unsafe. I don't want people to be manipulated into unsafe experiments by force of circumstance, either. Heck, I'm not even crazy about terminal people being exploited by snake oil salesmen and 'new age medicine,' who prey on hopeless people to get them (in their distress) to shell out money for some stupid thing. And that's just money.
Follow your logic. "You put a quarter in the Cancer jar -- so why not let me stick a needle in this guy's eyeball?" That's a very big leap. In your mind you've set up what's called a 'false equivalency.' Essentially means that you're carrying similarities beyond the scope of their actual connection. Another example would be, "I've got a friend who keeps a fluffy bunny for a pet, and she loves that it's furry. So why not keep a grizzly bear?"
to put it more bluntly: Yes, your friend is exercising self-gratification (or lying to you about why she doesn't want to give you leftovers). This is a wholly different matter.
You mentioned in your first post that "actually finds a cure for anything at all". First off, directly testing drugs on humans allow you to collect accurate and immediate data as opposed to animal testing or rambling about stuff in theory. The latter is horribly ineffective because you're essentially just hypothesizing the possible effects.
Let's not overlook the cost of that accuracy and immediacy. The system we've established exists to mitigate those costs, in the event that the accurate data immediately reads "Nope, not a cure, this one just causes perpetual agony." We allow human testing when a drug has met benchmark standards of safety and effectiveness -- when we're pretty damn sure it's not going to murder the test subjects. And it works -- here's a new cystic fibrosis treatment, here's one for skin cancer, here's one for TB, here's the latest on lukemia, here's Cushing's. To say 'you're essentially just hypothesizing about the possible effects" is a broad mischaracterization.
Secondly, "Your panacea is made out of the shattered lives of everyone who got the shitty Drug 1.0". How did you think medical breakthroughs occurred in the past...? Because physicians back then experimented on animals and had profound understanding of chemistry and the human biology and were able to write reports on why X or Y would be effective? For example, the heart lung machine of today. It was perfected through experimenting on humans. Those humans died. Do people who require cardiopulmonary bypasses today refuse the treatment because it was a technique perfected using the deaths of other humans? Do doctors feel guilty for using it?
well, actually.....
The real monstrous and despicable thing here is that people don't want to get their hands dirty. Everyone turns a blind eye to the obvious solutions because it would hurt their conscience. Even though these things only hold benefits for the masses; even to the ones its commited on because thats how crappy their lives are. And noone cares how crappy their lives are.
Couple things. In the first place, if the solutions were obvious, we wouldn't need human experimentation (or, in the case of a new breakthrough which was obviously an effective cure, it would easily pass the safety standards currently in place and be rushed through the process). Second, reiterating, in the conversation we're having these experiments would hurt my conscience and murder people, for the sake of a hypothetical. Third, if 'that's how crappy their lives are,' and you care, then make their lives less crappy without murdering them. Everybody wins.
