From 1844c924de84171e1701ece89310c2d9ee9644e0 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Holden Rohrer Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2020 06:24:03 -0400 Subject: essay two --- markley/essaytwo.bib | 15 ++++++ markley/essaytwo.tex | 129 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 2 files changed, 144 insertions(+) create mode 100644 markley/essaytwo.bib create mode 100644 markley/essaytwo.tex diff --git a/markley/essaytwo.bib b/markley/essaytwo.bib new file mode 100644 index 0000000..35f908d --- /dev/null +++ b/markley/essaytwo.bib @@ -0,0 +1,15 @@ +@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", +} diff --git a/markley/essaytwo.tex b/markley/essaytwo.tex new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a963acf --- /dev/null +++ b/markley/essaytwo.tex @@ -0,0 +1,129 @@ +\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} -- cgit