Letter - Reject Nazi Data

I am astonished that in this day and age, an eminent scientist such as Alan C. Nixon should resort to barbarism. For it is barbarism when he writes that it is alright to use data obtained from experiments on human subjects, obtained without their knowledge or consent. Whether it is prisoners of war and concentration camp inmates in Nazi Germany, blacks in the southern U.S.A. (a syphilis study), an unsuspecting public in New York City and San Francisco (bacterial vector studies by U.S. Army), and many more instances, there is an ethical and moral code which is ignored in all these cases. Nixon seems to imply that anything goes in the name of science. Well, anything does not go; there are certain experiments which should not be performed by one human being upon another. The end does not justify the means, for as has been shown countless times in human ...