Re: HUMAN RADIATION EXPERIMENTS

[Schoenhofer <schoenho@via.at>]

At 14:24 25.11.1996 -0600, you wrote:
>	

................  In the misguided premise, "the end justifies any 
>means" may lie real evil.  ....................

I agree with this simple sentence. I have been really surprised and shocked
that so many radsafers have used this premise. One cannot justify anything
evil by putting forward something "more evil". We cannot use our knowledge
of today to justify experiments which were fifty years ago clearly
undertaken to find out about the then unknown risk. One cannot justify on
one side human experiments and on the other side condemn others - probably
depending on the country where they were performed. There has been so much
misuse of this "national interest" and similar pathetic words, that it is
better to be very cautious. No soldier has felt fine under the circumstances
that Bernard Cohen described - neither Americans nor Germans nor Italians
nor British nor Sovjet - so it is not only a one sided situation and
experience, but a common one which should give us the insight that all wars
might be bad for everybody involved. The lesson should be to prevent wars
and therefore to prevent also the necessity of any similar experiments in
the future.

Sorry, this came a little off topic (and is so since long!), but I think
that scientists should also consider ethics with respect to what they do and
not only the scientific aspects.
Schoenhofer
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