Most people have at least a degree of empathy towards others. However, some don’t seem capable of this feeling, those who don’t see others as equals or even as humans. Some of these people manage to lead a convincingly ‘normal’ life. Others use their lack of empathy to trample themselves to the top, not caring who they step on. And others take it to a whole different level. They don’t see others as capable of pain or suffering; they are simply commodities for use. This article concerns some of the most alarming acts humans commit in the name of ‘science.’ There are graphic descriptions of human experiments, often conducted without consent, so please be warned before continuing.
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1 – Syphilis
During the Second World War, the Japanese researched biological and chemical warfare at Manshu Detachment, or Unit 731, as it was more infamously known. Most correctional officers of these experiments were conducted on the Chinese and were some of the most horrific crimes ever committed. The victims were men, women, and children. Including infants. Unit 731 researched various diseases, one of them being Syphilis. A correctional officer would later testify:
‘The researchers started forcing the prisoners into sexual acts with each other. Four- or five-unit members, dressed in white laboratory clothing completely covering the body with only eyes and mouth visible, rest covered, handled the tests. A male and female, one infected with Syphilis, would be brought together in a cell and forced into sex with each other. It was made clear that anyone resisting would be shot.’
As another way to dehumanise the victims, prison guards would refer to infected female genitalia as ‘jam-filled buns.’ Even children weren’t safe from being infected with the disease. Many would be sent to the vivisection area afterwards.
2- Pregnancy
As well as forced sex, female prisoners would be forced to become pregnant. The men who worked in Unit 731 would often rape the women they had been left in charge of. They would have to keep the pregnancy despite the dire conditions. If the woman were one of those who had been infected with Syphilis, they would wait until the baby was born, then dissect the mother and child straight away. Many children were born in Unit 731, but no survivors were recorded.
3 – Vivisection
One of the most awful experiments at Unit 731 was vivisection – human dissection. Without anaesthesia. As we have read, many victims were infected with diseases. They would then have their organs removed so the effects of the illness could be studied. Sometimes, only part of the organ would be removed. One former Unit 731 worker, Okawa Fukumatsu, confessed to performing vivisection on a pregnant woman. Eventually, when the body had been used/abused as much as possible, the victim would finally be put out of their agony and killed.
4 – Twins
During World War 2, Auschwitz II, known as Birkenau, was used as a labour and extermination camp. Joseph Mengele took a position there in 1943 before being promoted to First Physician in 1944. Unfortunately, instead of caring for the inmates, he conducted some of the most disturbing experiments known to man.
Mengele’s big obsession was twins, picking them from lineups and removing them from their parents, who they would never see again. Identical eugenicists, such as Mengele, believed that genetics were the reason for what they considered undesirable characteristics and that, by selective breeding, they could create an almost superhuman race. The Aryan race. And Mengele believed this could be achieved by studying twins.
At first, Mengele’s Children, as they were nicknamed, weren’t afraid of him. He was a good-looking man and would often carry sweets for the children, even playing with him. They would call him ‘Uncle Mengele.’ However, they would soon realise his cruel nature. He would infect one of the twins with disease. Once they succumbed, the other twin would be killed so they could be dissected and compared. Mengele once took an infant from a woman’s womb and threw it straight into a lit oven simply because it wasn’t a twin. One awful story involved Gypsy twins. In an attempt to create conjoined twins, the children were sewn back-to-back, their organs and blood vessels joined together. They screamed nonstop in agony before gangrene set in, and they died after three terrible days.
5 – Transplants
Between 1942-1943 experiments studying muscle, bone and nerve regeneration took place at the Ravensbruck concentration camp. Yet again, no anaesthetic was used throughout any of the procedures. Victims, known as ‘rabbits,’ would have their muscles, bones and nerves removed, leaving them mutilated, disfigured and, undoubtedly, in incredible pain. There are terrible accounts of limbs being removed from the conscious victims before they were reattached to other parts of the body. Many of these experiments took place under the eye of Doctor Herta Oberheauser. One prisoner described her: ‘Her face is a mask, her eyes glassy. She shows no shadow of pity and leaves wounds undressed for days, so the women feel they are rotting away inside the plaster, but when at last the dressings are changed, it is the worst torture of all.’
6 – Gynaecology
James Marion Sims is often called the ‘father of modern gynaecology,’ developing surgical techniques and tools to assist various gynaecological problems. In 1880, he became president of the American Medical Association. He invented devices such as the vaginal speculum and even pioneered surgery to repair tearing between the uterus and bladder that occurred during childbirth. This might sound ground-breaking, but finally, there was a focus on a medical area previously considered taboo and distasteful. However, this turns dark when you discover that Sims' research was on enslaved Black women. This becomes even more morbid at the realisation that Sims held the very racist belief that Black people did not feel pain. At the time, the only consent he needed for his experiments was from the slave owner. Sims would later write in his memoirs, ‘There was never a time that I could not, at any day, have had a subject for operation.’
One of his first ‘patients’ was an 18-year-old woman, Lucy, who had suffered bladder leakage since giving birth. Positioned naked on her elbows and knees, Lucy endured an hour-long surgery sans anaesthetic, screaming and crying in front of a medical audience. Even Sims wrote, ‘Lucy’s agony was extreme,’ yet strangely, he still did not believe Black people felt real pain. Lucy contracted blood poisoning and nearly died, taking months to recover.
He ‘perfected’ the surgery after four years and many experimental operations on women. If any of his patients died, he would blame ‘the sloth and ignorance of their mothers and the Black midwives who attended them.’
7 – Forced Gender
Bruce Reimer was just an infant when, in 1965, his parents took him and his twin brother to a doctor to be circumcised. However, the surgeon used an electrocautery needle which seriously damaged Bruce’s penis. His parents, unsure what to do, approached John Money, a psychologist who specialised in the subject of intersex children.
Money decided that the best thing would be to reassign Bruce’s gender surgically and raise him as a female. The transition started just before his 2nd birthday. Brenda, as she was now known, was given oestrogen supplements and monitored regularly by Money. In 1875, Money published part of his notes saying, ‘the girl already preferred dresses to pants, enjoyed wearing her hair in ribbons, bracelets, and frilly blouses and loved being her daddy’s little sweetheart. Throughout childhood, her stubbornness and the abundant physical energy she shares with her twin brother and expends freely have made her a tomboyish girl, but nonetheless a girl.’
Disturbingly, Bruce said that he was made to view photos of naked adults to ‘reinforce Brenda’s gender identity’, and both twins later accused Money of placing them in sexual positions. At the age of 6, Bruce was forced to play a female role and his twin, Brian, a male role. Brian was forced to ‘come up behind [him] and place his crotch against [his] buttocks.’ Bruce was forced to lie on his back with Brian on top and even to inspect each other’s genitalia. Money, shockingly, dismissed this as part of the theory of ‘sexual rehearsal play.’
Their mother noticed that Bruce/Brenda wasn’t comfortable and would often complain that they weren’t a girl, but these feelings were dismissed. It wasn’t until 1980 that the twins finally discovered the truth about what happened years beforehand. Everything suddenly made sense to Bruce/Brenda, and he began the long, painful process of becoming male again, calling himself David. Sadly, David could not overcome the confusion, pain and trauma he suffered throughout childhood and committed suicide at 38 years old. Brian had died two years previous from an overdose of antidepressants.
8 – Radiation Recovery
On September 30th, 1999, 35-year-old Hisashi Ouchi worked at a nuclear fuel-processing plant in Tokaimura, Japan. He and his two colleagues, who had no experience handling large amounts of uranium, were pouring it into a metal vat when there was a flash of light and an explosion, causing a release of radiation. It registered at 17 sieverts – 8 can be fatal.
Hisashi was closest and got a massive dose of radiation, one of the highest ever known; radiation in large quantities stops the body from making new cells. He was rushed to the University of Tokyo Hospital, covered in burns and blisters, his skin peeling off. It wasn’t long before his organs began to fail. His wife was horrified; it looked like he was crying blood as his body broke down. The doctors tried a variety of experimental operations on Hisashi, including skin grafts, blood transfusions and stem cell transplants. He spent his waking hours screaming in pain and crying out for his mother. The poor man once begged them to leave him alone to die, ‘I can’t take it anymore; I am not a guinea pig.’
However, the family wanted him alive and insisted the doctors continue their experiments on the young man. After 59 awful days, Hisashi had a heart attack. Cruelly (in my opinion), he was resuscitated at the family’s insistence. At one point, he had three heart attacks in under an hour. Mercifully, he died on 21st December 1999 after being kept alive in unimaginable pain for three months.
9 – Seawater
At Dachau during World War II, physician Hans Eppinger took 90 people to experiment on. His experiment showed if humans could survive on seawater alone for 6-12 days. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say: ‘Human kidneys can only make urine that is less salty than seawater. Therefore, to get rid of all the excess salt taken in by drinking seawater, you have to urinate more water than you drink. Eventually, you die of dehydration.’
During the experiment, the victims were deprived of all food and fresh water, resulting in their organs starting to shut down. There were even reports of victims licking the floor where it had been mopped in a desperate attempt to quench the terrible thirst that was killing them.
10 – Mustard Gas
Lasting more than ten years, the mustard gas experiments started in the 1930s in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, carried out by British scientists on soldiers from the British Indian Army. Before mustard gas was released, the test subjects were sent into gas chambers, wearing only a shirt and a pair of shorts. This resulted in extensive, painful burns all over their bodies, with many being hospitalised. There was no particular aftercare for those who were experimented on, and the after-effects, such as cancer, were never reported. To this day, it is debated as to whether or not the subjects consented to the experiment.
And those are just a few of the frightening experiments humans have performed on humans. Obviously, ethics wasn’t a factor when they were being conducted. But what about the results? Even though they were discovered via horrendous means, is it ethical to use the results to contribute to understanding science and psychology now? It’s a very tricky and complicated subject and one I am sure we will return to in the future. As always, thanks for reading, take care of yourselves, and I will see you next time.
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