Nonconsensual and Consensual Human Testing and Experimentations

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Recommended: Frankenstein themes analysis

The dangerous nature of human experimentations is a frequently recurring theme in fiction stories and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is one of such stories. The central character, Dr. Frankenstein, is obsessed with knowledge and in his pursuit of knowing all the secrets of life he creates a monster. The monster is a hideous creature, lonely and incapable of love. The creature laments the day of his creation and eventually resolves to destroy Dr. Frankenstein’s life by killing Dr. Frankenstein’s whole family. Dr.Frankenstein’s thirst for knowledge drives his whole life to destruction where his loses his family as well as his sanity dying alone in an explicable grief. Reckless and unnecessary manipulation with nature produced a desired result (the creation of a monster gave all the answers to the secrets of life), but the consequences that Dr.Frankenstein fails to foresee lead to a tragedy. The message Mary Shelley hoped to deliver to her contemporaries as well as to the future generations was a warning against taking extreme steps in experimentations towards promising, but radical scientific advancement. Many of was would agree that by manipulating natural world we often cross the borders of ethically acceptable conduct where the potential benefits seem to justify the evil nature of the experiment.

Experimentations on humans, even though essential for scientific progress, pose many ethical questions where we ask ourselves if we should continue disposing human bodies in the name of medicine. We hold the same old concern about a man’s obsession with knowledge where a discovery for the good of the majority might become a justifiable reason for exploiting one human being for the good of all.

Science has long being using human bodies...

... middle of paper ...

.... “Human Sacrifice and Human Experimentation: Reflections at Nuremberg.” Yale Journal of International Law 18.9(1997):401 - 419. Print

McElligott, Anthony. Useful bodies: Humans in the Service of Medical Science in the Twentieth Century. Washington: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. Print.

Pasternak, Alfred. Inhuman Research: Medical Experiments in German Concentration Camps. Budapest: Akademial Kiado, 2006.

Simmon, Diane. “Enhancing the culture of patient contribution to learning in health care.” Center for Information and Study on Clinical Research Participation.

(2010). Web. 28 February, 2011.

Strathern, Paul. A Brief History of Medicine: from Hippocrates to Gene Therapy.

New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers, 2005.

Straus, Alex. Medical Marvels: The 100 Greatest Advances in Medicine.

New York: Prometheus Books, 2006.

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