From the mid-19th century to the early 20th century, the world witnessed a turn of events in what can be considered as ugly and inhuman. There arose professors, scholars, and leaders who were determined to establish the reasons as to why some people were "inferior" (disabled, of different races, etc.) as compared to others. Some also wanted to end the generations of imbeciles, physically challenged and those who have other forms of impairment. There were different ways through which the human beings sought to accomplish their mission. Some chose Eugenics, others racial experimentation etc. to advance their beliefs. This paper discusses the racism, eugenics, and other means through which the human race was put under misguided experimentation.
Genocides
Germany is one of the few major states that were so much into racial experimentation and one that led to the deaths of many people. During the 19th century, the Germans led the field of science; particularly Chemistry and Biology. However, the academically strong nation ran another series of agendas of experimentation regarding the human race. As Fergusson (2011) states, after the arrival of Germans at the African West Coast in 1884, they started a program that led to massive loss of lives to the native Namibians. They were trying to prove that Africans were an inferior and a weak race as compared to the Aryans who had been purported to be the strongest and best of all the races in the world. This belief led to the invasion of the Namibian lands by Germans and acquisition of their land by dubious or forceful means. The Namibians resisted a signature forgery attempt by Zurn proposing that they had agreed to new settlement boundaries (Fergusson, 2011). They killed almost all the male settlers, sparing the women and men. However, in response to the attacks, the German general, Trotha, began a program that would claim more than 80% of the Herrero people of Namibia. He decreed that the Herrero natives leave the land for the Germans or face the bullet. In what he termed as absolute terrorism, the many who refused to leave were concentrated on the pretext that they were going to sing a peace treaty. Instead of a peace treaty, they were killed by gun, regardless of their ages and gender at Hamakari, near the Waterberg Plateau (Fergusson, 2011). The 1904 Hamakari massacre forced the survivors into the nearby desert where they could not get enough food as water for themselves.
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In 1917, another black massacre would follow. The French used the native blacks in war against the Germans. Nivelle, the French general, had Africans on the front row during the battle of Chemin des Dames. The war resulted in Germans killing many Africans who may not have been adequately skillful. The French wanted to use the blacks to wear out the Germans before they could attack them, though the plan failed and they were defeated. According to Fergusson (2011), states, "On the first day alone, the attacking forces suffered 40,000 casualties" (p.186). Africans were not important before the whites and could be killed, maimed, tortured for no reason. There is no justification for the Germans and French to kill Africans in such a manner. The Germans should have sought another means of punishing the Herrero and reaching an agreement regarding land matters. For whatever reasons, the land belonged to Africans and they had all the rights to share, sell, or refuse to. On the other hand, the French should have trained the Africans adequately if they had to use them ion the front line against the Germans. Instead, they chose to use them as a wall against the German ammunitions, greatly disregarding humanity in the process.
Experiments on Humans and Eugenics
During the World War II, the Japanese ran a series of experiments on civilians and soldiers under lieutenant general Shiro Ishii. It is believed that they could have conducted the experiments of the prisoners of war as well. According to Kaufman (2015), "These experiments, sometimes referred to as the "Asian Auschwitz," included vivisections, dissections, weapons testing, starvation, dehydration, poisoning, extreme temperature and pressure testing, and deliberate infection with numerous deadly diseases" (p.646). The experiments were used to develop a biological war weapon that was meant to be used in the war. The process was unethical since it used live human subjects with or without their consent. It was one of the worst experiments in the world as many people developed illnesses and a significant number lost their lives over the same. Though the process remains anonymous at present because of the government's failure to acknowledge it, it remains a misery among the Japanese and neighboring countries such as China (Kaufman, 2015). During the war, the Japanese also used women in sexual slavery in Tokyo. Women were forced to serve as comfort for the soldiers and other important government personnel during the war. Such atrocities relegate human beings to objects of any process from ill-intentioned governments and leaders. the Japanese had not right to use human for experiments knowing very well that it would greatly affect them, probably throughout their lives. The use of women for sexual slavery shows how Japan viewed women as objects meant to serve and satisfy men. There is no justification for such acts for human beings are genetically equal. No person is inferior to the other because of their gender, nationality, race, age, and position held in the government. Using power to disgrace others is a poor means of leadership.
The Germans also conducted experiments on humans in very many sites (Baader et al. 2005; Allen, 1986). The concentration camps set a good ground for the usually fatal experiments on human subjects selected from the perceived weak races such as the Jews. Hans Nachtsheim is one of the German scientists who carried out experiments on humans. In 1943, he experimented on the heredity of epilepsy in six children in Brandenburg Gorden (Baader et al. 2005). The experiment was a result of historically generated process that had been in the making for many years. Biomedicine proved to be a fertile ground for the scientists and medical personnel who sought to prove their genetic studies on certain traits in humans. Like Nachtsheim, many scientists across the world experimented on humans, later eugenics, in an attempt to tame negative and primitive traits and keep their races clean. Between 1943 and 1945, the Germans also carried out numerous experiments regarding chemical warfare on humans in which they tried to establish antidotes for gas attacks (Baader et al. 2005). The experiments carried on humans in concentration camps were dangerous and fatal. Many people suffered and others died from the experiments that involved the injection or inhalation of substances.
The United States also performed experiments on human subjects between 1941 and 1945 (Baader et al. 2005). Prisoners, the mentally ill, soldiers and children from orphanages were the subjects used for the processes. The studies experimented gonorrhea as a possible chemical warfare. These experiments followed a Tuskegee Syphilis study carried out in Alabama in 1932 where over 400 African-Americans veterans were exposed to untreated syphilis (Baader et al. 2005). The Public Health Service made is an observational study where the subjects would be followed until the death (the end point) to establish the disease process in untreated human cases (Baader et al. 2005).
The US also conducted and extensive Eugenic sterilization of the human subjects (Oswald, 1930). Eugenics was meant to cleanse humanity of the physical and mental defects. The mentally and physically impaired were subjected to the forceful sterilization so that they would not give birth to a generation of impaired persons (Allen, 1986). Proponents of Eugenics claimed that they wanted to keep their society safe from disability impurities. The process was welcome many states who consequently passed laws permitting forceful sterilization of prisoners, rapists, idiots, and imbeciles (Oswald, 1930). The Supreme Court's decision in Buck v, Bell (1927) affirmed eugenic sterilization leading to a series of such processes on humans in many states. Experiments on humans and eugenics were not justified especially because the perpetrators forced subjects into doing it. No humans, despite their states and races needed to be relegated to objects of dangerous and fatal studies.
The history of human atrocities carried out by world powers is so loud and disturbing given that they regarded themselves as civilized. It is clear that they went against the ethical considerations and performed experiments, sterilization and massacred many people whom they considered less human, primitive and useless in the world. The Africans, African-Americans, women, prisoners, Jews, soldiers, and civilians were among the frequent targets of the heinous process carried out by selfish and inconsiderate persons. The processes were unethical as they forced subjects, lied to them, changed experimental procedures, and infected and killed the subjects. Human experiments, massacres, and eugenics are not justified at all and the perpetrators had alternative subjects and punishment procedures that were more humane. In a civilized world, there should have been management of the processes that mercilessly killed and affected millions of people across the world. No matter the end result and the high profile data and inferences found as compared to animals, using humans as subjects were immoral and unethical.
References
Allen, Garland E. "The eugenics record office at Cold Spring Harbor, 1910-1940: an essay in institutional history." Osiris 2 (1986): 225-264.
Baader, Gerhard, et al. "Pathways to human experimentation, 1933-1945: Germany, Japan, and the United States." Osiris 20 (2005): 205-231.
Ferguson, Niall. “Civilization: The West and the Rest.” Penguin, 2011.
Kaufman, Zachary D. "Transitional Justice Delayed Is Not Transitional Justice Denied: Contemporary Confrontation of Japanese Human Experimentation During World War 1I Through a People's Tribunal." Yale Law & Policy Review 26.2 (2015): 7.
Oswald, Frances. "Eugenical Sterilization in the United States." American Journal of Sociology 36.1 (1930): 65-73.
