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authorHolden Rohrer <hr@hrhr.dev>2020-10-06 06:24:03 -0400
committerHolden Rohrer <hr@hrhr.dev>2020-10-06 06:24:03 -0400
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tree86ec6f87fbbd28a59ed44e51b91c12c712e1ef62 /markley
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essay two
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+@Book{Moreau,
+ Title="The Island of Dr.~Moreau",
+ URL="https://www.planetebook.com/free-ebooks/the-island-of-doctor-moreau.pdf",
+ Publisher="Planet Ebook",
+ Author="H.~G.~Wells",
+ Year = 1896,
+}
+@Book{Apartheid,
+ Title="Medical Apartheid",
+ Author="Harriet A. Washington",
+ URL="http://hdl.handle.net/10822/548034",
+ Year = 2006,
+ Publisher="Doubleday",
+ ISBN="978-0385509930",
+}
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+\documentclass[12pt]{article}
+\usepackage[letterpaper,headheight=15pt]{geometry}
+\geometry{top=1.0in, bottom=1.0in, left=1.0in, right=1.0in}
+\usepackage{setspace}
+\doublespacing
+\usepackage{times}
+\usepackage{fancyhdr}
+\pagestyle{fancy}
+\rhead{Rohrer \thepage}
+\cfoot{}
+\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0pt}
+\renewcommand{\footrulewidth}{0pt}
+\setlength{\headsep}{0.5in}%top of page to bottom of header
+\addtolength{\headsep}{-12pt}%max height of header
+\usepackage{xcolor}
+\usepackage{hyperref}
+\usepackage[style=mla,backend=bibtex]{biblatex}
+\defbibheading{bibliography}[\bibname]{\newpage\centerline{Works Cited}}
+\hypersetup{
+ colorlinks,
+ linkcolor={red!50!black},
+ citecolor={blue!50!black},
+ urlcolor={blue!80!black}
+}
+\addbibresource{essaytwo.bib}
+\begin{document}
+{\parindent0pt\obeylines
+Holden Rohrer
+Markley
+English Composition II
+20 Sep 2020
+}
+\centerline{\large\bfseries The Underbelly of the Modern Experiment}
+
+The medical profession has tended to not focus solely on the individual,
+also prioritizing social welfare---pursuing remedies and policies
+aligned with their contemporary cultures' rules and regulations.
+In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ``scientific rigor'' became
+one of these cultural ideals for discerning a remedy's effectiveness.
+Scientific rigor is characterized by the experiment, defined by Claude
+Bernard as ``an observation induced with an object of control.''
+\autocite[55]{Apartheid}
+In medicine, this ``object of control'' is typically a human or animal
+subject, which gives the experiment ethical weight.
+This opposes the standard idea of an experiment from other fields where
+an experimenter should attempt to control the object absolutely and
+induce a phenomenon as directly as possible.
+The conflict between the experiment and traditional ethics has created
+a medical ethic where physician experimenters treat health, the rules
+and regulations preserving wellbeing, as restrictions rather than
+objectives.
+{\itshape Medical Apartheid} enumerates experiments where researchers
+abused black people and immigrants because they are vulnerable---easy
+targets for an amoral scientist.
+{\itshape The Island of Dr.~Moreau} illustrates the brazenness
+researchers exhibit when there isn't legal restraint.
+
+The fictional Dr.~Moreau is a hyperbolic vivisector, a physician who
+performs experiments and surgeries on live animals, often without
+anesthaesia. %cite definition?
+Because of how horrifying his research was, Moreau ``had to leave
+England.'' \autocite[39]{Moreau}
+A ``gruesome pamphlet'' and a ``wretched dog, flayed and otherwise
+mutilated, escaped from Moreau's house'' \autocite[39]{Moreau} conspired
+to take down his career.
+The journalist's takedown worked because he violated the moral
+guidelines of health, an institution physicians are supposed to hold
+especially highly.
+But Wells establishes further the experimenter's singular focus:
+``he might perhaps have purchased his social peace\dots but he
+apparently preferred [his investigations], as most men would who have
+once fallen under the overmastering spell of research.''
+\autocite[40]{Moreau}
+As Wells elaborates, there isn't an exact moral failing of the
+researcher but rather the belief that research supercedes the health of
+the ``object'' \autocite[55]{Apartheid} being studied.
+
+{\itshape Medical Apartheid} acknowledges doctors who took a similar
+attitude with black people, essentially treating them as less than human
+as justification for harmful, nonconsensual medical experiment.
+But, Washington stresses, exploiting African-Americans was mostly
+socially acceptable, but this practice continues far past antebellum.
+Medical mores, however, lag due to opportunism: ``African Americans were
+without legal protections and thus unable to hamper physician's
+activities.'' \autocite[57]{Apartheid}
+The dehumanization that physicians promoted argues that ``blacks were so
+different from whites---less intelligent, much less sensitive to
+pain\dots as to constitute a different species.''
+\autocite[74]{Apartheid}
+Physicians don't just practice callous experiment, but they hide it when
+they're aware of its violation of social rules: ``once up in the North,
+[Sims] hid the ethnicity of his subjects.'' \autocite[67]{Apartheid}
+With Moreau, Sims, despite not being cast out, predates those without
+power for expediency's sake.
+These nontherapeutic experiments and the attitudes that bolster them
+clearly don't improve the individual health of their subjects or
+work to preserve wellness, which is why it contradicts health, which is
+recognized by reservations about African American experimentation.
+
+{\itshape The Island of Dr.~Moreau} limns a similar dehumanization,
+where Moreau rationalizes his actions by considering his originally
+animal subjects as inhuman and unworthy of human ethics.
+Harm reduction is used as a common system of health, both in {\itshape
+Medical Apartheid} and in {\itshape Dr.~Moreau}, but Dr.~Moreau seeks to
+negate Edward, the narrator's, concerns with by claiming that pain is
+basal and inhuman---that not experiencing pain is superhuman.
+``Men, the more intelligent they become\dots the less they will need the
+goad [pain] to keep them out of danger,'' \autocite[92]{Moreau} Moreau
+claims, trying to expedite even moral and health concerns because he
+really believes in his study at all cost. He reveals his true end by
+saying ``I have never troubled about the ethics.'' \autocite[93]{Moreau}
+The experimenter is an archetype often treated as a deranged and
+entirely detached ``Dr. Frankenstein,'' but expediency and flouting of
+health is much more common, even for ``overachieving adepts with
+sterling reputations.'' \autocite[13]{Apartheid}
+Moreau hyperbolizes experimenters' attitudes, but his motivations and
+arguments do not differ greatly from his socially-accepted
+contemporaries.
+
+Nearly all researchers exhibit some degree of this ``expediency ethic,''
+which is natural but frightening.
+It means that the more remote the power structure, the more likely it is
+to be flouted---internal review of a field or soft social barriers don't
+cut it.
+For researchers to universally follow ethical guidelines, they need to
+be codified and enforced because experimenters won't do it themselves.
+
+\printbibliography
+\end{document}