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\begin{document}
{\parindent0pt\obeylines
Holden Rohrer
Markley
English Composition II
20 Sep 2020
}
\centerline{\large\bfseries Frankenstein's not that Far Off}
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.
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