Medical Experiments on Prisoners and the Mentally Ill

The Brandt reading on The Case of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study shows a terrifying  example of how structural violence (in this case, racism) can lead to “ethically unjustified” experimental research on societies most vulnerable citizens. One such population of vulnerable citizens is mentally ill patients and prisoners in the United States. Although shocking, it was once seen as fine to experiment on mentally ill persons and prisoners. In fact, many life saving vaccines were created using mentally ill patients and prisoners as subjects. For example, Dr. Jonas Salk, famous for inventing the polio vaccine, injected experimental flu vaccine in male patients at an Michigan insane asylum. In 1942, a federally funded study exposed men to hepatitis in a series of experiments, including patients from a mental institution in Connecticut. Dr. Paul Havens, the primary researcher in this experiment, was one of the first scientists to differentiate types of hepatitis and their causes. These studies, along with dozens of others indicates that prisoners and mentally ill persons have long been victimized for the sake of science. Unfortunately, these vulnerable populations are often unable to consent or even object to such experiments. It is only now, in the 20th century, that we recognize such experimental research on vulnerable populations as unethical.

Human Rights, Military Intervention and Syria

Towards the end of his lecture on human values, Michael Ignatieff discusses the issues surrounding military intervention and human rights. He states, “Intervention, instead of reinforcing respect for human rights, is consuming their legitimacy, both because our interventions are unsuccessful and because they are inconsistent. And we cannot solve our problem by not intervening at all.” Ignatieff argues that the United States has failed in its past military interventions in Rwanda, Iraq, Bosnia and Kosovo.  Today, the United States faces the dilemma of whether to use military force as a means to intervene in Syria’s civil war. In their attempt to overthrow their authoritarian leader Bashar al-Assad, as many as 7,000 Syrian citizens have died. With the United States feeling morally obligated to help the Syrian people, military force has been debated as the correct means to do so.  But many argue, like Igatieff, that using violence to stop violence will only lead to further suffering and violations on human rights. If military intervention must be used, there needs to be clear basis to justify that decision. It’s clear that there needs to be an intervention in Syria, but whether or not military use should be used is unclear.

The United States and the Right to Health

Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including…medical care.” The United States does not reflect this ideology. In fact, before the ratification of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, the United States was one of the few, if not the only, developed nation in the world that did not guarantee health coverage for its citizens. The right to health care in the United States has become a source of heated debate. One of the arguments against making health care a legal right in the United States proposes that it shouldn’t be so because it is not listed under the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution. The Bill of Rights lists people’s rights that the government “cannot infringe upon, not services or material goods that the government must ensure for the people.” But shouldn’t health care also be considered a Civil Right? American’s should not have to make the choice between financial ruin and paying for medical treatments needed to stay alive. I argue that the people of the United States, regardless of race, colour, sex, gender, language, socioeconomic status, religion, sexuality, and other status, should not be discriminated against for being sick. The U.S. Constitution, which came into effect on March 4th, 1789, needs to be updated to reflect the needs of Americans in the 21st century. What is a more basic human right, than health?

– A video discussing the road to health reform in the United States under President Barack Obama