In article , Cub Driver
wrote:

A researcher, with full
condemnation of the Nazi work, asserted that using the results of
certain experiments (e.g., anoxia and hypothermia) for legitimate
treatment-oriented research was at least some ethical recompense that
the victims hadn't died completely in vain.

That certainly makes sense to me. How can we possibly justify throwing
away knowledge because we don't like the way in which it was attained?

While some of the argument against it is pure condemnation of the
physicians involved -- we cast you out of our consideration (indeed, a
later Nuremburg trial cast several by the neck until dead, while others
committed suicide), a more mainstream argument is that they don't ever
want to leave a loophole by which some future researcher might do work
with involuntary subjects, and damage them.

It's not a simple situation, with many ramifications beyond what I've
described. Some researchers feel it is totally impossible to get truly
independent consent from prisoners.

An unfortunate reality, however, is that prison medical care can be very
bad outside research trials -- which have separate funding and
personnel. I recently went through some expert testimony in a suit
regarding close to 100 deaths, relatively recently, in a US state
prison. Most of these -- not associated with a research trial -- could
either have been prevented with proper care, or at least have been much
more comfortable and dignified deaths than lying on the floor outside
the prison infirmary.



When we start making judgment calls like this, we could, for example,
demand that the U.S. dismantle its nuclear plants on the ground that
they would not exist if the Manhattan Engineer District hadn't set out
to build the bomb that killed the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.


I can't really give you a reasoned reply to that other than a gut
feeling that such an argument is farther from the specifics than of the
research studies. There's no question that the research subjects of
Siegfried Rascher and his ilk (especially known for anoxia, but also
hypothermia experiments) were not in any sense licit volunteers. The
problem in the other argument is that the residents of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki may have been licit collateral victims of a lawful attack.

There's a lot of professional nervousness about "medicalizing" things
that don't have a pure medical quality. These range from forcibly
treating a psychotic criminal [1] with medications to render them sane,
to some of the truly bizarre features of an execution by lethal
injection [2]. There are questions about whether it is constitutional to
rely on psychiatric testimony to confine a prisoner who completed the
court-ordered sentence. I have no simple answers.

[1] My gut reaction here is that it can be reasonable to medicate a
prisoner so they are not a danger to themselves or others. It can be
reasonable to medicate them so they can participate in their defense,
although if it's necessary to medicate them for that purpose, it seems
you've made the case for hospitalization rather than prison. It gets
very messy if the mental illness developed after the crime, so you can't
really use an insanity defense.
Medicating someone simply to let them understand they are being
executed, however, strikes me as cruel and unusual punishment.

[2] The apparently universal protocol used for lethal injection simply
doesn't make much sense. It uses three drugs in succession, the only
rationale for this is that it essentially duplicates the procedure used
for stopping the heart for open heart surgery -- which I have had.
In the lethal injection protocols I've first drug injected, an
ultrashort acting barbiturate, differs in the quantity that would be
given in surgery. The protocols note that a lethal dose is given.
Short and ultrashort acting barbiturates are the drugs used in
veterinary and legal human (Dutch, for example) euthanasia. That drug
would suffice, unless someone has a bizarre desire to make it more of a
standard medical procedure.
Using an alcohol swab, ostensibly to prevent infection, on someone
who will be dead in an hour seems to speak for itself. Ironically,
European practice is generally not to use alcohol rubs for normal
injection. At best, in normal practice, a quick rub does some cleaning,
but clearly does not disinfect. Alcohol must be in continuous contact
with the surface for at least 2 minutes for even low-level disinfection,
and 10 minutes for greater surety.