In the late 1700s a Mr.Slater sued a Dr. Stapleton and Dr. Baker for re-breaking a poorly healed bone. The court found in favor of Mr. Slater because the defendants acted, � ���"contrary to known standard of care and did so without the informed consent of the subject.� �� � Although, the treatment turned out to set a new standard of care in the end, the courts decision did not turn on the success of the experiment, but on the lack of informed consent, that the patient, "...may take courage and put himself in such a situation as to enable him to undergo the operation". 3. (Slater v Baker and Stapleton (1797) 95 English Reports 860.)
Physicians not eager to give up their Godlike position to treat people as less that full subjects; but, also wanting to make money without being sued, learned to treat the more privileged according to the standard of care, and experiment on those less likely to sue. While being offered little in terms of medical care (medicine administered in their interest), these subjugated groups served as a resource for human lab rats upon which to test this or that drug, treatment, or procedure. Financial and other coercive means were employed in some cases, others downright deception. Informed consent, in any meaningful sense of the word, was rarely sought. Thus, the poor had more than simple economic inability to pay keeping them from seeking medical care from � ���"outsiders� �� �, and in particular from the allopath. 4.
With the advent of surgery; however, physicians needed more than lab rats, they needed living cadavers. While drafted soldiers may � ���"volunteer� �� � to be lab rats in order to avoid being sent to kill others, and many patients can unknowingly be injected with this or that, surgical experimentation presents the problem of being impossible to hide from the patient. Given the extreme nature of surgery and the very high infection rate at the time, (rendering surgery a very risky proposition), it was virtually impossible to acquire � ���"consent� ���".
The allopath turned to non-free peoples as a resource for breathing cadavers. Subjects with absolutely no freedom to object, slaves, poor mental health patients, and prisoners of war became prime targets for some of the most vial forms of human exploitation. Dr J Marion Sims,(1813-1884) the � ���"father of modern Gynecology� �� �, and the first physician to have a statue erected in his honor in the United States, provides a particularly atrocious, if not unique, example. Doctor Sims avoided the problem of a scarcity in � ���"voluntary� �� � subjects by using African American slave women. The problem of patient autonomy and the need for consent was avoided, and not thinking of the women as human subjects, Dr. Sims operated on his slave and Irish female subjects without anesthesia, something he dare not do to women of privilege. The condition for which Sims sought a cure, " was largely caused within the slave population by malnourishment and/or pregnancies at a young age, such that the pelvic was underdeveloped leading to prolonged obstructed labors. Dr. Sims not only did not do anything to help the condition of these women, he used them, and their unborn. Most of the women used in his experiments died, many after suffering for weeks. When slave owners refused him further access to their property, he purchased slaves, the first a seventeen year old slave girl he called Anarcha for $500 upon which he performed over 30 operations within a few months in spite of the fact that his own records indicate she was cured after the 13th surgery. There is no reason to assume the slaves he purchased (particularly given the price) were always afflicted prior to Sims' experiments. Anarcha's condition (several vaginal tears) was the result of a three-day labor, and then a rough forceps (another of Sims' inventions) assisted delivery by Dr. Sims, an experimental procedure in which he had no previous experience, using an experimental tool still controversial to this day. While you can read modern apologists who insinuate that these procedures may have been voluntary, these women were slaves, anesthesia was not used (until post surgery so Sims would not have to listen to their moans), and the number of surgeries performed on single subjects were in the double digits. People were asked to hold the women down, most of who after a couple of times could no longer stomach the task, nor Dr. Sims. 5 There is every reason to assume the bulk of these women did not � ���"volunteer� �� � and the girl(s) he purchased most certainly did not.
Apologists also argue that without this sort of violence and abuse the achievements of Sims would never have been enjoyed by millions of women today. This is an obvious logical fallacy as there is no reason to assume that similar (perhaps less violent) procedures would not have been developed by other physicians. More than logical fallacy, historical evidence refutes the claim. In fact, Sims was not the first to repair vesicovaginal fistulas successfully. Twenty-five years before Sims' experiments (from 1845 to 1849) Montague Gosset in England had used silver wire in a fistula repair, and the use of lead shot to hold wire sutures in place was also known. In 1836, John Peter Mettauer in Virginia and, in 1839, George Hayward in Massachusetts succeeded in closing fistulas. 6. Thus, there is no reason to assume that only Sims could have copied and published these achievements. There is no reason to assume such advancements require such violations of human autonomy. Many contemporaries made medical advances without the use of captive patients. Ephraim McDowell of Kentucky, who in 1809 performed the first successful abdominal operation, and Crawford Long of Georgia, who in 1842 used ether as an anesthetic for the first time, to name just two, both used informed, free, white patients.
Many medical anti-ethicists, as they can only descriptively be called, argue that Sims must be judge by the standards of his time, not ours. However, many speculate Sims left the South due to significant criticism. His colleagues at a Woman's Hospital Sims help found were so critical of Sims' unethical experimentation that they voted to ban his cancer surgeries and limit the number of spectators in attendance at surgeries. Eventually, his colleagues so feared for the lives of patients at the hospital they invited Dr. Sims to leave the Hospital. His brother-in-law, also a physician, pleaded with Sims to give up his surgeries. James Simpson of Edinburgh, pointedly remarked in critic of Sr. Sims, "I took occasion to make an extensive series of experiments ... [on] a number of unfortunate pigs, which were always, of course, first indulged with a good dose of chloroform." 7. Nor was Sims a Calvinistic practitioner who did not believe in anesthesia, as he did give his victims chloroform post surgery, if only so he did not have to listen to their moans from the pain.
Given Sims experiments (as he brutally carried them out) would not have been possible had his subjects not been slaves, given such abuse was not necessary for the � ���"advancement of women's medicine� �� �, given the criticism of his own contemporaries, and given both slavery and non-consensual experimental procedures have come under mass social critic and legal restraint one might find it hard to understand why contemporary medical ethicists might defend Sims' experiments. Still, many physicians are irrationally emphatic about in their defense of Dr. Sims, arguing the end justified his means. I am convinced, and evidence suggest, they do so not because their argument is well supported by reason or evidence, but because they feel they have a vested interest in opposition to patient autonomy and the ethic against violating informed consent, they have a vested interest in treating the rich and subjecting the poor to violent abuses against patient autonomy, dignity, and health.
To be Continued: In the next chapter I will talk about current practice. We will also address physician justifications for violations of Kant's moral imperative, their fiduciary duties, and Hippocratic oath. Finally we will propose legislation to address these violations and an opportunity for you to act.
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Vaccines and Medical Experiments on Children, Minorities, Woman and Inmates (1845 - 2007), Friday, December 14, 2007 by: Mike Adams, Natural News Editor
BITTER PILL : Disseminating Truth And Fighting Tyranny
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