What the....?

[MariaRegina]

They also performed surgery on animals without anesthetic, including live dissection, and on infants until fairly recently.

People have had some weird ideas about pain and what it meant in the past. They all seem like horrible things - not just equating people to animals, but thinking that even animal or non-rational suffering was ok.

Lord have mercy.

 

[Damaris]

Also, Dr. J Marion Sims experimented on his female slaves, subjecting them to dozens of gynecological surgeries in the backyard of his home without anesthesia, even though it was available at the time. Once he was certain of his techniques, he offered the surgeries to white women with the benefit of anesthesia in normal hospitals, but he maintained that poor Irish women did not require ether.

M.

I went to a college where Dr. Sims was honored with a building named after him. I think their excuse was that Dr. Sims did eventually fix his victims' fistulas. A vesicovaginal fistula causes the woman to urinate uncontrollably through her vagina, and women who suffered from that were ostracized.

But I have never given them a dime as an alumna for that reason. He operated on one woman thirty times before managing to help her, and did so without anesthesia.

 

[Dorothea]

Reading such things you all have posted, it makes me wonder where the human is in these humans. Ugh.

 

[Damaris]

Reading such things you all have posted, it makes me wonder where the human is in these humans. Ugh.

It might help to read about the Milgram experiment and the Stanford prison experiment.

Ironically, both of these experiments have themselves been considered ethically questionable, but they did give us a great deal of insight into how power and authority affect our ability to retain moral integrity.

 

[Photini]

Kind of related: I've seen a sentiment expressed lately that people on food stamps/medicaid should be sterilized or at least forced onto birth control until they are off of welfare.

It makes me sad.

 

[Dorothea]

It might help to read about the Milgram experiment and the Stanford prison experiment.

Ironically, both of these experiments have themselves been considered ethically questionable, but they did give us a great deal of insight into how power and authority affect our ability to retain moral integrity.

Thanks. I'll read it.

 

[rusmeister]

When we discover that such things really ARE, and in our own country, it is natural to be shocked.

One reason I'd stress for everyone who can to read stuff like the book I posted above is that reading GKC is like reading Nostradamus. There's an important difference between reading someone who describes what has happened and one who correctly describes what will happen. The latter has an indisputably better sense of causes - insight.

For me, after the shock of "Wow! This is awful stuff!" I want to get to "How does this come to pass in a country that was once Christian, whose ideals once looked to the heavens?"

 

[gurneyhalleck1]

Rus, I'm starting to get the impression that you like Chesterton.

When we discover that such things really ARE, and in our own country, it is natural to be shocked.

One reason I'd stress for everyone who can to read stuff like the book I posted above is that reading GKC is like reading Nostradamus. There's an important difference between reading someone who describes what has happened and one who correctly describes what will happen. The latter has an indisputably better sense of causes - insight.

For me, after the shock of "Wow! This is awful stuff!" I want to get to "How does this come to pass in a country that was once Christian, whose ideals once looked to the heavens?"

 

[choirfiend]

It was very recently that they started giving infants anesthesia. They used to think that they didn't/couldn't experience pain since they were "underdeveloped". With the state of shock that those poor babies must have been in it's a wonder they didnt die from it. A

But, even today many baby boys are circumcised without anesthesia, and even if they receive it, it's pretty clear in the research that there is not adequate method of anesthesia to deal with the trauma. It's pretty cruel imo.

 

[Gxg (G²)]

Yes, this happened. Among the black community it was called a Mississippi appendectomy: you go in to the hospital for one thing, but of you were black and poor you got sterilized. They sterilized teens who were sexually active too.

At my former Protestant church there was a woman who immigrated from south America. She had 5 children in her country then when her husband joined her they continued to have 3 more. On her third pregnancy, the doctor told her she should not have any more children. She asked if there were health reasons for this, but there were none he could name. Well, her healthy pregnancy ended in a cesearian delivery where he sterilized her without her or her husband's consent. Because they were immigrants, poor, etc. they didn't go after the doctor. That was in the 80's.

M.

That's such a shame...

 

[bibledoctor]

They probably do the same thing with mental health patients...

 

[katherine2001]

It most certainly did happen. Unfortunately, as you said many people (especially blacks) were sterilized against their will and the CIA experimented with LSD giving it people without their knowledge (they didn't tell them what they were giving them or the consequences). There was also cases of radiation being released in major cities in the US after WWII to see what the effects would be, again without informing the cities that they were doing this. As much as we put down the KGB, our CIA and other government agencies don't have clean hands either.