In the Name of Science by Andrew Goliszek

The desperate race to control nuclear proliferation was used to justify radiation experiments whose effects are still being felt today. The need to gain an upper hand in the Cold War justified CIA experiments involving mind control and drugs. The science of 'eugenics' justified enforced sterilization. The sobering and gripping accumulation of evidence in this book proves exactly what has been justified in the name of science. Experimentation rests upon an equation that balances suffering against gain, the good of the collective against the rights of the individual, and the risk of unknown consequences against the rewards of scientific discovery.Įverything depends upon who makes that equation. Explicitly or implicitly, any organization or government that undertakes or sponsors scientific research applies some measure of human worth. What has happened in the decades since World War II has differed only in degree. The subjects were deemed subhuman ordinary guidelines could therefore be suspended. These barbaric exercises in pseudoscience grew out of assumptions of racial superiority. The German and Japanese human experiments of the 1930s and 1940s horrified the world when they came to light. Those limits are in constant need of redefinition, for the goals and the techniques have become both more refined and more secretive. The ethical limits governing use of the human body in experimentation have been breached, redefined, and breached again-from the moment the first plague-ridden corpse was heaved over the fortifications of a besieged medieval city to the use of cutting-edge gene therapy today. Knowledge has a price often that price has been human suffering. Behind the bright promise of life-saving vaccines and life-enhancing technologies lies the true cost of the efforts to develop them. Science, as Andrew Goliszek proves in this compendious, chilling, and eye-opening book, has always had its dark side.

In the Name of Science by Andrew Goliszek