japanese war crimes-- was hiroshima

From: Charles Gray


On Tue, 13 Jan 2004 05:36:18 -0500, Cub Driver
wrote:


Yep. We were pretty darned nice, for the times.

You neglected to mention that the internees were paid compensation and
given an apology. I don't recall that my friend Dick O'Kane got either
from the Japanese who starved and worked and beat him down to 98
pounds in one year.

all the best -- Dan Ford
email:

see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
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Or the Korean "comfort women", or the Korean slave workers, or the
American and British Civilians...or the literally tens of millions of
Chinese, filipino's and other's who had the misfortune to be
"liberated" by the Japanese.
Japan, with some exceptions (mostly personal, not governmental) has
a very large policy of forgetfulness with those actions...and in other
cases continues to try to justify them.
Especially egregious is the lawsuits that are dropped because you
cannot get compensation because "it was already settled" in
peacetreaties that never brought the matter up.

I believe that the internment camps were a disgrace, and an
unamerican act, especially as the 442nd was proving its loyalty in
blood.
But to imagine for the slightest moment that that injustice
compares-- can even be compared-- to the wholesale slaughter of
Germany and Japan's brutal occupations and death camps would be absurd
if it wasn't so popular a point of view.
The internment WASN'T comparable to those acts-- but it was a dark
moment in U.S. history because we are, and should be, judged to a
higher standard than the governments that only worshipped brute force.

I would also mention, that although I think the apology did come
too late, it was an act of congress, signed into law by the
president-- so it wasn't simply an apology by any single group, it was
an apology on behalf of the United States, and its' citizens, from our
elected leaders.


The U.S. DID do medical experiments on par with the Nazis. Think of the black
men in the syphilis experiments who were deliberately left untreated as an
example. In several states "mentally deficient" people were forcibly
sterilized. Maybe the U.S. didn't do these sorts of things to as many people,
but we did do it.

Antisemitism WAS rampant in many parts of the U.S. and was one of the reasons
FDR never included saving Jews in Nazi occupied territories. He was afraid he
would lose support for the war.

Having said all this the comparison between Nazi concentration camps and the
Japanese, Italian and German internment camps in the U.S. is uncalled for. For
one thing German internees were allowed to hang up pictures of Hitler. The
inmates of the Nazi camps weren't allowed to post pictures of Churchill, Stalin
or FDR.

Dan, U. S. Air Force, retired

"B2431" wrote in message
...

The U.S. DID do medical experiments on par with the Nazis. Think of the
black
men in the syphilis experiments who were deliberately left untreated as an
example. In several states "mentally deficient" people were forcibly
sterilized. Maybe the U.S. didn't do these sorts of things to as many
people,
but we did do it.

No, neither of those things is "on par with the Nazis" human experiments.
The Nazis did things like throw prisoners into ice water to see how
long they could survive.

John Keeney wrote:

"B2431" wrote in message
...

The U.S. DID do medical experiments on par with the Nazis. Think of the

black

men in the syphilis experiments who were deliberately left untreated as an
example. In several states "mentally deficient" people were forcibly
sterilized. Maybe the U.S. didn't do these sorts of things to as many

people,

but we did do it.


No, neither of those things is "on par with the Nazis" human experiments.
The Nazis did things like throw prisoners into ice water to see how
long they could survive.



How about the time they injected plutonium into hospital patients to see
what would happen? That comes pretty close IMO

John

On Thu, 15 Jan 2004 11:01:12 +0000, John Mullen
wrote:

John Keeney wrote:

"B2431" wrote in message
...

The U.S. DID do medical experiments on par with the Nazis. Think of the

black

men in the syphilis experiments who were deliberately left untreated as an
example. In several states "mentally deficient" people were forcibly
sterilized. Maybe the U.S. didn't do these sorts of things to as many

people,

but we did do it.


No, neither of those things is "on par with the Nazis" human experiments.
The Nazis did things like throw prisoners into ice water to see how
long they could survive.



How about the time they injected plutonium into hospital patients to see
what would happen? That comes pretty close IMO

John

I think it comes very close-- in the sense the crimes were
committed. Nobody's saying the U.S was perfect, and in fact I
consider it a great wrong that when these expiriments were revealed,
the surviving doctors and administrators (and since they were done in
the 30's, there would be some), were not prosecuted for their crimes.

In article ,
(B2431) wrote:



The U.S. DID do medical experiments on par with the Nazis. Think of the
black
men in the syphilis experiments who were deliberately left untreated as
an
example.

You are correct that the US, before WWII, did some long-term medical
studies that definitely violated the Helsinki Declaration of Human
Rights (circa 1952, from memory), written in large part due to Nazi
actions called medical experiments [1]. By modern standards, I consider
the long-term syphilis observation study an utter violation of medical
ethics.

But medical ethics evolve. It's relatively recent that controlled
double-blind studies finally gave up, for ethical reasons, a placebo
control arm guaranteed to be of no benefit to the patient. The current
ethical standard in clinical trials is that the control arm (or arms) is
the best accepted current treatment. Depending on the study design and
the ethical review and approval of at least an Institutional Review
Board and possibly other authorities, the experimental arm(s) of a
treatment [2] protocol uses an experimental therapy that has a
reasonable chance of at least equivalent results, or possibly a
combination of standard and experimental therapy.

[1] Most of what were termed Nazi medical experiments focused on
pseudo-science, racial theory justification, or evaluations of
treatments not reasonably expected to be equivalent to accepted therapy,
At the conclusion of many of these experiments, the subjects were
killed, either for autopsy or simply because they were inconvenient.

A small fraction of Nazi (and Japanese) experiments, while still
absolutely unethical, were of sufficiently careful design that their
results may have at least statistical validity. Last year, IIRC, the
issue reopened again in the New England Journal of Medicine, probably
the most prestigious medical publication. 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.

Other researchers and ethicists maintain that the data from these indeed
murderous experiments should never be used in any further research. A
related question came during the Korean War, where the ONLY data
available on certain hemorrhagic fevers came from involuntary Japanese
BW studies.

In standard pharmacology textbooks, one will find papers on the effect
of cyanides on the heart, with data that came from legal execution.
There's no indication of the condemned agreed to be studied. Indeed,
there is a continuing controversy if physicians may be involved at all
in legal execution -- several state medical associations have forbidden
their members to participate in any aspect, some allow very restricted
participation.

The situation remains other than black and white. Without getting into
details well outside the scope of this discussion, there are very
ethical physicians who maintain the exact informed consent approach used
in the US is culturally inappropriate for their societies -- which have
different decision-making structures (e.g., let the family, not the
patient worry) that are benign in intent. No simple answers.

[2] Not all approved research studies necessarily benefit the patient.
Phase I drug trials most often involve administering single, or small
doses of drug to healthy volunteers in order to evaluate its
distribution in the body, side effects, etc. There are also Phase I
trials for patients with diseases with no known treatment, where the
experimental agent MIGHT do some good. A third category is pure
research, not necessarily clinically oriented at all, or used to get
statistical information on diagnostic information in large populations.

I participate in several such long-term statistical studies at NIH
Clinical Center, where I also volunteer for various experimental cardiac
imaging studies. These studies do not necessarily benefit me, although I
definitely receive an overall benefit from continuing clinical review
and recommendation by top-flight cardiologists. To help keep me stable
as a reference, I also get free regular cardiac medication from them.

In several states "mentally deficient" people were forcibly
sterilized. Maybe the U.S. didn't do these sorts of things to as many
people,
but we did do it.

Antisemitism WAS rampant in many parts of the U.S. and was one of the
reasons
FDR never included saving Jews in Nazi occupied territories. He was
afraid he
would lose support for the war.

Indeed that may have been a decision factor. There were also practical
limitations. While resistance groups and governments in exiles requested
the Allies bomb the death camps in Poland, the flight paths would have
been such that available bombers did not have the range to attack them
without a refueling stop in the USSR. The Soviets refused permission.


Having said all this the comparison between Nazi concentration camps and
the
Japanese, Italian and German internment camps in the U.S. is uncalled
for. For
one thing German internees were allowed to hang up pictures of Hitler.
The
inmates of the Nazi camps weren't allowed to post pictures of Churchill,
Stalin
or FDR.

More to the point, no US camp routinely executed groups, or subjected
them to conditions that would reasonably be expected to produce a high
death rate.

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?

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.

all the best -- Dan Ford
email:

see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com

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.

Using an alcohol swab, ostensibly to prevent infection, on someone
who will be dead in an hour seems to speak for itself

Well, perhaps it's for the sake of the doctor, either to reassure him
that what he's doing is a normal medical procedure, or perhaps only so
he won't get out of the habit of disinfecting when he's dealing with
people he's trying to save!

Thank you, Howard, for a sane and reasoned take on a difficult
subject.


all the best -- Dan Ford
email:

see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com

In article , Cub Driver
wrote:

Using an alcohol swab, ostensibly to prevent infection, on someone
who will be dead in an hour seems to speak for itself

Well, perhaps it's for the sake of the doctor, either to reassure him
that what he's doing is a normal medical procedure, or perhaps only so
he won't get out of the habit of disinfecting when he's dealing with
people he's trying to save!

Thank you, Howard, for a sane and reasoned take on a difficult
subject.

The subject gets truly weird at times. One anti-lethal-injection legal
campaign, rejected by the courts, pointed out that thiopental sodium,
pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride had not been given an FDA
"safe and effective" approval for the indication of execution.

It turns out that the FDA does, in fact, approve drugs for the specific
purpose of veterinary euthanasia, and, in keeping with the regulations
on drug approvals, designates them "safe and effective" for the marketed
purpose.

Think about that one for a while. Moderate consumption of ethanol, in
your choice of flavor, is usually safe and effective for the resulting
brain tilt.

It turns out that the FDA does, in fact, approve drugs for the specific
purpose of veterinary euthanasia,

Isn't that sodium pentathol? (I'm not sure about the spelling.) We
once put down a St Bernard who weighed almost as much as I do, and at
the time I marveled what an easy death that was.

all the best -- Dan Ford
email:

see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com