Medical Torture Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Medical Torture - Research Paper Example This was essentially the same debate that existed in Britain during the nineteenth century on vivisections (Miller 334). If the prisoner dies from taking the herb medicine, then that herb plant or its active ingredients can be eliminated from the list of possible medicinal drugs from the list kept by the imperial doctors. If the prisoner gets well, then that herbal concoction gets examined for its other healing properties and included in that precious list. Ancient Chinese medicine could be cited here as an example of medical practices that may have bordered on the unethical if it is considered within today’s stricter context in bio-ethics. Acupuncturists could not gain much knowledge about the human body without using live humans as experimental subjects. There are obvious advantages to using live human subjects in medical experiments. A need to examine the effects of certain drugs or surgical procedures on live subjects gives the immediate feedback that has great importance on the search for medical knowledge. The field of medical science did not cringe from using live animals for experiments, such as monkeys and rats, until these practices were banned only recently for humanitarian reasons. Discussion China was not alone in the ancient world in its search for cures of human ailments. Other ancient civilizations such as those in Iraq, Egypt and Persia also contributed to the accumulation of human medical knowledge. The search for a cure can be considered as the corollary to a much deeper search – the search for the fountain of youth and immortality. In ancient Chinese traditional medicine, emperors constantly consulted with their sage doctors or physicians regarding such topics as pathology, diagnostics, acupuncture and moxibution. The ancient priests of Egypt succeeded in developing the lost medical art of mummification in their quest for immortality and in building the pyramids to house their mummies. In ancient China, these sage physicians an d erudite teachers discussed medicine in the wider context of the overall Chinese culture to encompass other areas of knowledge such as cosmology, astronomy, geography, military science, philosophy and divination (Galambos 1). It can be said that the search for medical answers to some of the most baffling diseases like cancer continues today. Although medical professionals are expected to adhere to the ancient oath of Hippocrates, there are a few rogue elements that will resort to shortcuts and unethical methods to obtain their research. This is especially tempting to people who have illusions of grandeur, such as being the first to discover the cure for cancer, as an example. A more recent experience with medical experimentation was that of Nazi Germany in which prisoners were used in experiments, sometimes without the use of anesthesia, to test the limits of human endurance and tolerance for pain. Their use of live humans was founded on the false science of eugenics based on hered ity and Darwin’s theory of evolution. Famous people were captivated by an allure of eugenics (literally, good genes) like Winston Churchill and John Maynard Keynes among others, to include US presidents Roosevelt and Wilson. It was a by-product of the Progressive Movement to attain social progress (Winfield 59). Eugenics apparently lost favor because of those inhuman and unauthorized series of experiments which even some medical scientists found to be revolting. The practice of the false