It exists because, in the very recent past, a lot of shady stuff has happened just because people were curious. The “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male”; Dr. Chester Southam injecting cancer cells into unconsenting patients; Josef Mengele's experiments in Nazi concentration camps… Maybe they overcorrected, but there's good reason!
The US government granted many of the "scientists" immunity in exchange for giving over all the data they had learned and helped even cover it up lol
The Japanese did some real fucked up shit in these experiments like chopping off limbs and reattaching them to the opposite side and slicing open pregnant women.
They also flew low flying planes over Chinese cities and dropped Plague-infected fleas which killed tens of thousands of people.
In total, they killed hundreds of thousands of people.
TIL the USA not only let the people they captured go free in exchange for the information they had on Unit 731, they continued experiments until 1956, well after the war, though this time with Japanese victims.
I'm not confused about why the field exists. And I agree that something needed to be done to prevent repeats of those horrors. But the current state of the field is (in my opinion) unacceptable.
When something bad happens, the person it happened to or their family will often be (understandably) irrational, and make the maximum amount of fuss and ask for the maximum damages and penalties. Even if the risk was reasonable and ethical. So naturally researchers, medics, take extra precautions. Being reasonably ethical might not be enough protection.
One thing that might be done (in my clueless opinion) is accept that sometimes shit happens and preventing the victim from getting exaggerated revenge or damages or whatever.
I'm sure at least once it happened that people who actively requested experimental treatments turned around and sued or called for prosecution after their experimental treatment took a bad turn. Of course researchers will be reluctant to provide experimental treatments.
A hospital I worked at would only provide dialysis to immigrants if they were in florid kidney failure. So they’d come to the ER dying, get dialysis once, then get released with no follow-up. They’d have to wait til they were back in kidney failure to come back, no preventative care was funded by the fed so they just stuck to that. There is no ethics in the American medical system. Anything claiming to represent it is a scam.
It's the law that US hospitals have to provide care regardless of ability to pay in an emergency but not preventative care. Medicaid, which would cover dialysis for most poor people doesn't cover unauthorized immigrants. Your hospital is functioning as the law directs it to. I was going to put "as the law intends" but our system is very much a Frankenstein quilt with many effects that nobody really intends. But politicians know that people would be angry if they heard an immigrant was left outside a hospital to die of kidney failure and they know people would be angry about providing non-emergency medicine for free and they know that not many people will notice we collectively spend more money this way and most of the people who do notice won't see how it makes everybody's medical care more expensive rather than just hurting hopsitcal owners and unauthorized immigrants.
Well, given recent events... maybe some people vote for "no free lunch out of my tax money", even though they themselves may end up needing the "free lunch" (the federal funded dialisys). Are you sure it's not ethical to deny it to them in this situation?
On a large enough scale, we decide the rules that apply amongst us. How could it be unethical? Who's being unfair to us, martians? God?
We're being unfair to each other... seems fair that we get unfair treatment.
That is the standard for American emergency departments, and they do that because EMTALA requires them to treat anyone enough to keep them from dying, if possible - but that's all.
