December 31, 2009 • 27 mins
Human experimentation is an age-old practice, dating back to 4 BCE. Listen in as Josh and Chuck give you the low-down on the historic, grisly underbelly of science and medicine -- human experimentation.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from House Stuff Works dot com. Sometimes science goes too far,
Dog Matters twisted but true. Wednesday's at ten on Science. Hey,
(00:25):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Happy New
Year too. Huh. Yeah, that's Chuck Bryant, Charles W. Bryant,
baby here himself. Yeah, he's always chubby me No, baby
New Year Chuck. Yeah, with the ears. Yeah, poor kids.
He always has like kind of curly hair, which I'm
(00:46):
I'm not a com portion too. Yeah. You know, growing
up watching the little Claymation Happy New Year baby thing,
the baby New Year. Remember the Huge years. Oh, that's
so I was just talking about. That was like the
little stock claymation like Rudolph. Yeah, but there was one
for for New Year's and it was the baby that
had the huge ears. When he took his hat off,
his ears would pop out and everyone would chastise him.
(01:07):
What did it sound like when he took his ears
out like that? It sounded like actually, but always felt
bad because I thought it was a cute little claymation baby. Yeah,
it was that the crux of it that, like he
just had big ears and everybody laughed at him. Yeah.
I can't remember how it ented he finally found a
home or something. I don't know. You're good, because there's
nothing sadder than a homeless baby on New Year's yea
(01:28):
with big ears, Chuck, Josh, have you ever heard of Herophilus?
I have? You want to talk a bit about herofilus
journey back to fourth century BC, or as you like
to say, b c E the new BC. Um he
was that he's known as the father of anatomy. Yeah,
(01:48):
and one of the ways that he became known as
the father of anatomy was by um dissecting vivisecting live
human beings. Yes, live, well, I was about to say
live cald ever, But a cad ever is dead, live
human human patients dissecting for for science, right, and I
(02:09):
believe they were they were criminals right many times. Yes,
So we're talking about human experimentation. We're basing this on
an article written by the fine esteemed writer Robert Lamb
and he starts out paid zero with um. This account
of horofilis uh cutting through the eyeball of a guy
(02:29):
who was strapped to a table and I guess something
stuffed in his mouth to muffle the screams. But his
eyeball is being dissected in front of a group of
surgeons by Horaflis. Please once more, the master pots flesh
enters the bloody maze of otteries and muscle. You know,
we should have gotten r l in here to read
it himself. Good stuff. So yeah, um, apparently this guy
(02:53):
that um that that Robert's writing about, this victim was
one of more than six hundred that were vivisected at
the hands of Herophilis over the course of his lifetime, right, yes,
for alive prisoners. Yeah, so that's kind of sickening. It
is horrific, but it was apparently par for the course, right, yeah,
(03:14):
the time. Sure, So all these people, why would you
why would you dissect a live person or vivisect a
live person. I think it's dissect if it is dead,
and vivisect if they're alive, is it? I believe? So? Well,
I mean there's there's there's reasons for it. You wouldn't
want to justify it. But they were doing that because
sometimes you just need a human to perform an experiment
(03:35):
on and sometimes a kid ever didn't do the job.
And before they were scruples, they would, you know, do
it on a live person instead of like an animal
test right. Apparently back in horafulis is age. Also, they
thought that air was carried in the circulatory system rather
than blood, which is weird because if you vivisector person,
blood comes out, although I imagine air does too since
(03:57):
you can't see it. They're like, oh, let's air. This
is just something. And this guy's the father of anatomy.
He is. Come on, here's the big ironic twist. All
of his writings that he all the notes he took,
all the the scholarly works he created based on the
deaths or the intolerable pain experienced by these six people
(04:17):
were all lost when the Library of Alexandria burned in
uh to. This is rapidly devolving into a sound effect show. Yeah,
it's so um should we tell people what that is?
(04:39):
Jerry got us a little gift for Christmas, a little
uh sound machine, And the funny thing is that she
asked us to keep it on the d L and
we just told a hundred thousand people. Yeah. Yeah. The
other funny thing, and so she actually said we could
use it. I thought she was gonna say, well, here,
but you can never use this, right, Yeah, and she
encouraged us to use it as well. So chuck. The
idea of somebody writhing under the knife while a guy
(05:01):
like Corophilis or anybody else with a sharp sharp object
cuts his eyeball open to examine the nerves inside. Uh,
is a pretty horrific idea, indeed, Um. And the problem
is is this kind of thing didn't end in a
d two seventy two. Now it continued on. Apparently history
(05:22):
is littered with human experimentation. Yes, so much so that
there were body snatching problems in the nineteenth century because
medical schools needed bodies, right they You couldn't in the
nineteenth century. By the nineteenth century, you couldn't vivisect anybody
you weren't supposed to. And also because of the puritanical ideals, Um,
(05:45):
you couldn't do any kind of um dissection on cadavers.
Right now, of course you can, right, which is a
good move, because, like you said, there was a lot
of grave robbing going on to supply the medical schools
who still needed this knowledge. Um. And wanted, and we're
willing to pay grave robbers for it. Time. Do you
remember back in ninety nine when they found some bones,
(06:07):
actually hundred bones in the basement of Medical College of Georgia. Really, yeah,
I did not know that. Yeah, they were they dated
back to the nineteenth century, and they were linked to
um rob graves. Yeah. That's crazy, isn't it? It is
so well, you know, that's if you're dealing with kidavers
if you're there. Also, if you wanted to experiment on
(06:29):
a live um living thing, then you would now have
to go the route of like chimps and rabbits and
mice rats, right, which actually, what we've done, from what
I understand, is with human experimentation, we've put lower making
air quotes here, lower species in between us and initial discovery. Right. Yeah.
(06:53):
The problem was back in the day though, they did
the same thing, but they considered lower species other humans
specifically convicts, yeah, or poor are in destitute, diseased, Yeah exactly,
but convicts for sure, convicts have pretty much always gotten
it pretty bad, um as far as human experimentation goes.
But yeah, um, so these days we we do put
h rabbits and rats and and um, chimps and macaques
(07:16):
and in between us and um, you know, not knowing
what a drug will do or something like that. But really,
ultimately it still ends up to humans. And one of
the reasons why is because you know, you can't you
they we don't even know whether or not animals experience happiness,
you know, do they How can we figure out if
(07:36):
they're hallucinating? Yeah? Sure, they can't help self report. Yeah,
you gotta ask questions every now and then. Right, and
then also, I mean, if you're doing if you're making
a drug for humans, you eventually have to find out
exactly what it does to humans. It's not gonna have
the same effect on a rat, although it will probably
be close. And what we'll get into that in a minute.
All right, should we talk about some of the horrific
(07:57):
things that have happened throughout our history? Judge, Well, don't
forget the whole him. There's another there's another route you
could take it self experimentation, Yes, living your living self,
experimenting on yourself, which I mean there have been some
famous examples of this. Yes. Famously, Pierre and Mary Curie
earned a Nobel Prize in Physics from radiation research, and
(08:19):
they did this pie taping radium salts to their skin
and seeing what happened. So that's one way to do it.
Another guy who famously tried his his research out on
himself as Albert Hoffman, the guy who created LSD, right,
and apparently he had a diary where he writes about
his bike ride home after injecting himself with LSD and
(08:40):
he had no bike. No, he had a bike, but
he was like, Wow, nothing is real And I really
feel like listening to pink Floyd right now. Yeah, yet
to be discovered, pink Floyd yet to be born. I
think even um so Chuck self experimentation has its own flaws, right,
if you're vivisecting an eyeball and you do it to yourself,
(09:04):
you can't do that more than once. You probably wouldn't
even do it that one time, yea. So really there
is a lot to be gained from vivisecting human beings. Well,
we don't do it. And one of the reasons why
is because it's horrific. So yes, let's talk about some
of the horrific human experiments that litter history. Jay Mary
(09:24):
and Simms. Is that name? Ringabelle No? That is uh
considered to be the father of gynecology. Oh yeah, Jay
Mary and Sims, Sims and uh. He even became the
president of the A M A and eighteen seventy six.
But he developed um experimental surgeries by testing them on
(09:45):
African slaves many times without anesthesia. Yeah, dark side for sure, man. Yeah,
I would definitely call that a dark side. Yeah. He
gets lauded probably in many circles still today he does. Um. Apparently,
Uh that was we think of the Nazis especially, and
we'll talk about them in a minute. But the US
has a really shady history of human experimentation. Um. A
(10:08):
guy named Dr Leo Stanley Uh injected prisoners at San
Quentin with animal testinges too uh slow or reverse aging,
which did not work out. Um, Cholerado experiments on the
Philippines conducted by US nineteen fifteen, Palagra experiments in Mississippi, right. Uh.
(10:29):
And then apparently we were talking about how prisoners have
always gotten a bad rap up. Until the nineteen seventies
in the United States, pretty much all pharmaceuticals were tested
on convicts. You did not want to break a law. Now,
I wonder you know how people hearken back to like
the the Golden Age when there was less crime and
(10:50):
less violence and all that. I wonder how much of
it had to do with the fact that if you
went to prison, like you would be experimented on. Yeah,
I wonder if you know that, though it probably wasn't
why they reported. Until you get to prison. Then you're like,
oh oops, yeah that's yeah. Had I known, right, but
I imagine recitativism rates what what's a bone head word?
We're pretty low. Yeah, you're probably right, so chuck. You know. Also,
(11:13):
the United States was huge into compulsory sterilization, right, I
did not know that the eugenics movement. Okay, so between
I guess the early nineteen hundreds, the first decade of
the twentieth century up until the seventies, I think maybe
the ninety one, uh sixty four thousand people in the
United States were sterilized against their will, like epileptics, the
(11:37):
mentally handicapped, blind, deaf, mutes, um schizophrenics, and Native Americans
against their will, sometimes unknowingly unbelievable. Yeah, which you could.
That's not necessarily an experiment because you know exactly what's
gonna happen. The prison is going to be sterilized. But um,
if you look at it as eugenics, it's it is
(11:59):
kind of larger experiment to basically created great race and
then the eugenics the popularity. I mean it was well
known this was going on. This was in a secret
government program like mk ultra, right, and there was public
support for it until World War Two, which remember actually
can you remember to the future, Yes, when we talk
about mercenaries, right, World War Two changed everything we did. Yeah,
(12:23):
the Nazis really lead the way when it comes to
human experimentation. Um, as everyone knows against the Jews, Gypsies,
anyone they felt like targeting. They would do things like
freezing them to research hypothermia and then actually came it
became huge later their hypothermia research is like really used
still yeah, well we'll get into the ethics. Uh. They
(12:46):
put them in the compression chambers to test the effects
of high altitude flight, which it doesn't get much worse
than that, and a sterilization experiments as well, like the
US was doing. They would use a phosphorus incendiary phosphorus
devices to figure out how to treat phosphorus burns. Japan
was another country. Their Unit seven thirty one very famous
(13:06):
unit reportedly killed more than ten thousand Chinese, Korean, and
Russian POWs to develop biological weapons and tests of stuff
out on them basically, right. Um. So the Nazis in
particular face the music at Nuremberg, right um. And there
was this part to the Nuremberg trials called the Doctor's trials. Uh.
(13:27):
And I think a bunch of the guys, like seventeen
were convicted, and most of them I think were hanged. Yeah, um.
And a lot of these guys cases were Dude, we
didn't break any laws. There's no lawful outline of what
to do when you're experimenting on a human, and a
lot of this stuff followed the same kind of protocol
(13:47):
that we had before the war, right right, which is
just horrendous, but in a lot of cases it was
actually true. Right. So one of the results of the
Nuremberg Trial was the Nuremberg Code, where the international community said,
all right, we need to outline some some guidelines for
human experimentation. And if I think there's like ten points
(14:09):
to it, ten large overviews UH to human experimentation guidelines,
and it focuses on UM reducing UH, fear and pain
discomfort in the experiment. Subjects that can't be coerced, that
has to be willing, that have to be informed. What's
this covered by? What's that under? You know, like what
document or organization that's under I don't know, probably the
(14:33):
u WIN. I would think the u N would have
something to do with that. But yes, but it's very
famous called the Nuremberg Code, right, and it solves like
the moral quandary uh jevercy Um extreme measures, Gene Hackman,
Hugh Grant, all right, so you know, like in the end,
I think they're in a sewer somehow. Gene Hackman's like,
if you had to kill one to save a million,
(14:54):
wouldn't you have to do it? And so the Nuremberg
Code solves that. And the answer, by the way, is no,
you wouldn't kill one. Yeah, that's the old, the age
old question, though, right, kill one to save many, which
is a very utilitarian view of of looking at things like, yes,
you kill one person to save a million, of course
you do, but we as an international collective have decided
that you don't do that. One person's life is worth
(15:17):
as much as a million people's potential lives. So that
brings us to The real quandary that with human experimentation
is what do you do with this information that has
gained from these awful, awful experiments. Um. A lot of
detractors will say that to use this information supports human experimentation, right,
But then another way of looking at it is to
(15:39):
propose like kind of do a thought experiment of all right,
let's say that you are you walk in on one
of these experiments. You say, your death is inevitable and
it's going to be a painful, horrible death. But you
can choose whether or not this data that was that
your results from your death is suppressed or used. Which
one do you want? And then you know that most
(16:01):
people would say, well, if I'm going to die anyway,
I would want this data to be used. That's the
argument the other side uses, Yeah, the US cut a
little deal though with you one. I know we were
it's such we have such a shady history, like we
used Nazi scientists to get us to the moon. Well,
this was particularly to keep it from falling into the
wrong hands. So we thought, hey, rather than give that
(16:22):
to the Russians Une, let's cut a deal where the
officers responsible for this good immunity from prosecution and war crimes,
and we get the data, and we'll even give you
a little stipend. Yeah, on the side, we'll give you
some money probably way to come up with those biological weapons.
Nicely done. Um, Like we said, the Nazi hypothermia experiments,
(16:44):
which were pretty brutal apparently, um the they would put
you in an icy vat of water with a thermometer
in erectum and they found that most people died, went
unconscious and died around when their body temperature seventy degrees fahrenheit. Right, yeah,
it's it's such a useful information. But no, the useful
information came in they were looking for ways to revive
(17:07):
people suffering from hypothermia because the Germans were losing so
many people on the Eastern Front in Germany. Um that
they actually did figure out ways of quickly reviving people
suffering from hypothermia. So hypotherp post war hypothermia researchers are like, dude,
these people, as ghastly as these experiments are, they figured
(17:28):
out how to revive people suffering from hypothermia. We need
that information. So I think with with that, UM, I
guess that group leading the charge Nazi data has been
used in a lot of ways, but then there it
should be cited, I think was the compromise that they
came up with. Yeah, and it actually worked the other
way to Jewish doctors would later study um victims of
(17:52):
starvation in the ghetto and the word slaw ghetto and
they use that to aid in the study of UM
hunger associated disease. So they found a way to use
it at least. And so we were talking also about
how the US has a nice long history of horrible
stuff like the Tuskegee experiments. You want to talk about that. Yes,
(18:14):
a forty year study of a syphilis began in nineteen
thirty two, and they use African Americans who sought treatment
for this disease, and they basically straight up lied and
deceived them thinking they were being treated. Right. They they
actually didn't use any kind of medical intervention because they
wanted to watch the progression of syphilis. Yeah, they want
to see it gets worse, and so they could chart
(18:36):
everything out and they had no idea. And then I
guess finally in uh No, the US issues a public
apology for for this and there's still some people alive
who were experimented on unbelievable. Yeah, and you know, we've
we've documented the LSD experiments that unsuspecting Americans were dosed
(18:57):
and the mk Ultra project. We did a whole show
on that. Didn't me Yeah, it was like our best one,
didn't we did you forget? Well it was a long
time ago, so yeah, well you were kind of out
of it if you remember. The beginning of that one
was oh, that's right. Yeah, we did a role playing
so Chuck. There was kind of a huge sea change
(19:19):
in the way that human experimentation was looked at and
carried out when the f d A was established in
the thirties. All of a sudden, there were review boards
and panels. Um, the universities kind of stepped in and said,
all right, we play a big role in this. We're
gonna start establishing stricter oversight of human experimentation. And that's
(19:40):
kind of the course that we've followed since then. Right,
drug trials, drug trials exactly? Do you know any human
guinea pigs? Now I've never done it, but um, you know,
phase one drug trials is usually where you'll get the
most folks, because you need healthy, healthy individuals who are
willing to risk their health for money and basically what
they're doing in these phase one trial or you know
(20:01):
when you see these commercials that rattle off a hundred
side effects, they're positively frightening. They get these from giving
these uh these medications to people and seeing what happens. Basically, Yeah,
Robert Lamb put it really well. He said that if
your bottle of medication says that it might result in
bowl bowel control problems or suicidal thoughts, you can bet
that someone received a paycheck for experiencing them at some
(20:23):
point exactly. So that's what they know. So that's phase one.
Phase two deals with dosing and efficiency, and phase three
enlist um actual patients who need this treatment, not not
healthy people, and people who volunteer for phase one clinical
trials are uh handsomely paid depending on the risk involves.
(20:44):
That's one of the problems. Yeah, And I mean it's
kind of like a vacation. You're you're fed, and you're
put up maybe in a hotel or the hospital room
has um like a video game console, you watch movies
or whatever, and they just shoot you full of something
and then come in like every fifteen minutes or hour
whatever and say, you know, like have you seen that
leopard can you were talking to earlier again, you know,
(21:07):
that kind of stuff. But that's one of the problems
is that some of these folks bounced from experiment to
experiment and you know, kind of make a half asked
living off of this, right, I guess you can. I mean,
especially if you're dedicated. He talks about Lamb talks about
a an article in The New Yorker that is about
it's called guinea pigging, I believe, and it's about this
(21:28):
soap culture of clinical drug trial participants who have their
own like publications that show like who's what upcoming drug
trials are, are are in the pipeline and how much
they're gonna pay and that kind of stuff. So there's
a concern that, like, yeah, these people are kind of
hooked on this lifestyle. My thing is is like to
(21:50):
each his own, sure, you know, yeah, I mean, if
they're if there are no laws being broken and they're
getting paid and they're willing to do this instead of
going to get a chop delivering pizzas, then you know, frankly,
if they can get my pizza to me and stay safe,
not harm other people, and deliver a delicious pizza. Still
I don't care if they're in the midst of a
(22:10):
drug trial. Right. Then, here's another thing I didn't know
that I thought was interesting in this article is that
they kind of put the pedal to the metal when
it comes to these trials because a US drug patent
only last for twenty years, and so if you're hung
up for a decade and research and testing, which can happen,
then that they don't start it over once you get
it approved. You've got only ten years left to make
(22:33):
you know, serious money, and they speed these things along.
They do. Now, if you're running it through university, they
generally have well, universities have a reputation for being total
sticklers when it comes to um institutional review boards, right um.
So as a result, I think that a lot of
drug companies have found that if you run it instead
(22:54):
through a private organization that does the clinical trials for you,
and then all of a sudden, you can walk around
all out of these ethical guidelines or you know, safe
conditions and yet again outsourcing to private contractors for money.
It's uh, just it's the way to get around things exactly.
(23:15):
So that's medical experimentation. There's a this is a really
cool article. It's slightly outside of the how Stuff Works voice.
Robert Lamb put his all in all into it. He
put his Lamb stamp on it. He did at the
very least. You gotta read paid zero, and I defy
you to just repaid zero. For those of you out there,
a page zero is really page one. We just that's
the insider lingo here and we still Chuck and I
(23:36):
have worked here for more than two years and we've
still never figured out why they call it paid zero.
So if you want to read paid zero of how
Human Experimentation Works, you can type in human experimentation in
the handy search bar at how stuff Works dot com.
And I guess you could say that that leads us
to listener. May. Yes, Josh, this is about in our
(24:00):
Co States. I remember Narco States. I'm gonna call it
a Narco state email. Uh, this is from Christer who
Actually you had to write Christer back and say are
you're a boy or a girl because I've never heard
that name? And Christos a dude. So Christo says I
currently live in Wires, Mexico. What yeah, exactly, because we
(24:21):
covered wires pretty thoroughly. Yeah, it is sad to stand
out as a dangerous narco zone rather than being recognized
for a decent achievement. Uh, but things here are indeed
pretty crazy. Murders are super high, and I've tragically lost
some friends throughout the year. As if this wasn't enough,
even the government is messing with us, as I had
an experience last July my parents happened on a clothing shop.
(24:43):
We were asked by some federal agents to give out
a big amount of money two d and fifty thousand
U S. Dollars just because, of course, my family refused
to do so. A week later, they came with an
order to close and empty my parents shop and locked
up my dad. We gave a smaller amount just so
he was released and we thought it would just in there.
But to our surprise, a month later, we were surrounded
(25:04):
by about twenty agents holding an apprehension order to take
both of my parents, charging them for supposedly commercializing priate
of clothing, which was a trump up charged I know.
I was left alone with my three younger brothers for
more than three months until the agent on top agreed
to let them out of prison for fifty dollars and
the case was closed. The sick experience, and thank god
(25:26):
it was finally over. Throughout those three months of grief,
you guys were right there with me, and you were
a nice distraction from my awful situation at a time
that was clearly troubling, and I want to thank you
for that. It was probably doesn't mean the same to
you guys, but it was helpful in some way for me.
I no longer want to live in this place, and
I'm just looking forward to moving to the US as
(25:47):
soon as possible, I know. Uh. So we just wanted
to share this and say Merry Christmas. So um, we
had some angry people right in by the way about me,
saying we should just drop the borders and let anyone in.
And I just want to say to those folks, think
about people like Krister here who are just dying to
get to the United States because of of stuff like this,
(26:07):
and the US represents, you know, something, something great to them,
and uh, we shouldn't forget that. So that this I'm
on my high hearts and now I'm getting off of it.
Thanks ju. Do we have a horse effect? Now, let's see,
we've got something close to it. And that would be
(26:29):
weird if you have an email about escaping certain death,
being extorted by the Mexican military, or any kind of
unjust um story, right true. Yeah, you can send it
in an email to stuff podcast at Wait. Happy New Year, everybody, Yeah,
(26:49):
Happy New Year. Be safe. Christoper, We're glad you're alive. Yes,
we're glad. Everybody who made it through two thousand and
nine made it through two thousand nine. Act how stuff
works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
(27:16):
other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Want more
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Stuff works dot com home page. Brought to you by
the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from House Stuff Works dot com. Sometimes science goes too far,
Dog Matters twisted but true. Wednesday's at ten on Science. Hey,
(00:25):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Happy New
Year too. Huh. Yeah, that's Chuck Bryant, Charles W. Bryant,
baby here himself. Yeah, he's always chubby me No, baby
New Year Chuck. Yeah, with the ears. Yeah, poor kids.
He always has like kind of curly hair, which I'm
(00:46):
I'm not a com portion too. Yeah. You know, growing
up watching the little Claymation Happy New Year baby thing,
the baby New Year. Remember the Huge years. Oh, that's
so I was just talking about. That was like the
little stock claymation like Rudolph. Yeah, but there was one
for for New Year's and it was the baby that
had the huge ears. When he took his hat off,
his ears would pop out and everyone would chastise him.
(01:07):
What did it sound like when he took his ears
out like that? It sounded like actually, but always felt
bad because I thought it was a cute little claymation baby. Yeah,
it was that the crux of it that, like he
just had big ears and everybody laughed at him. Yeah.
I can't remember how it ented he finally found a
home or something. I don't know. You're good, because there's
nothing sadder than a homeless baby on New Year's yea
(01:28):
with big ears, Chuck, Josh, have you ever heard of Herophilus?
I have? You want to talk a bit about herofilus
journey back to fourth century BC, or as you like
to say, b c E the new BC. Um he
was that he's known as the father of anatomy. Yeah,
(01:48):
and one of the ways that he became known as
the father of anatomy was by um dissecting vivisecting live
human beings. Yes, live, well, I was about to say
live cald ever, But a cad ever is dead, live
human human patients dissecting for for science, right, and I
(02:09):
believe they were they were criminals right many times. Yes,
So we're talking about human experimentation. We're basing this on
an article written by the fine esteemed writer Robert Lamb
and he starts out paid zero with um. This account
of horofilis uh cutting through the eyeball of a guy
(02:29):
who was strapped to a table and I guess something
stuffed in his mouth to muffle the screams. But his
eyeball is being dissected in front of a group of
surgeons by Horaflis. Please once more, the master pots flesh
enters the bloody maze of otteries and muscle. You know,
we should have gotten r l in here to read
it himself. Good stuff. So yeah, um, apparently this guy
(02:53):
that um that that Robert's writing about, this victim was
one of more than six hundred that were vivisected at
the hands of Herophilis over the course of his lifetime, right, yes,
for alive prisoners. Yeah, so that's kind of sickening. It
is horrific, but it was apparently par for the course, right, yeah,
(03:14):
the time. Sure, So all these people, why would you
why would you dissect a live person or vivisect a
live person. I think it's dissect if it is dead,
and vivisect if they're alive, is it? I believe? So? Well,
I mean there's there's there's reasons for it. You wouldn't
want to justify it. But they were doing that because
sometimes you just need a human to perform an experiment
(03:35):
on and sometimes a kid ever didn't do the job.
And before they were scruples, they would, you know, do
it on a live person instead of like an animal
test right. Apparently back in horafulis is age. Also, they
thought that air was carried in the circulatory system rather
than blood, which is weird because if you vivisector person,
blood comes out, although I imagine air does too since
(03:57):
you can't see it. They're like, oh, let's air. This
is just something. And this guy's the father of anatomy.
He is. Come on, here's the big ironic twist. All
of his writings that he all the notes he took,
all the the scholarly works he created based on the
deaths or the intolerable pain experienced by these six people
(04:17):
were all lost when the Library of Alexandria burned in
uh to. This is rapidly devolving into a sound effect show. Yeah,
it's so um should we tell people what that is?
(04:39):
Jerry got us a little gift for Christmas, a little
uh sound machine, And the funny thing is that she
asked us to keep it on the d L and
we just told a hundred thousand people. Yeah. Yeah. The
other funny thing, and so she actually said we could
use it. I thought she was gonna say, well, here,
but you can never use this, right, Yeah, and she
encouraged us to use it as well. So chuck. The
idea of somebody writhing under the knife while a guy
(05:01):
like Corophilis or anybody else with a sharp sharp object
cuts his eyeball open to examine the nerves inside. Uh,
is a pretty horrific idea, indeed, Um. And the problem
is is this kind of thing didn't end in a
d two seventy two. Now it continued on. Apparently history
(05:22):
is littered with human experimentation. Yes, so much so that
there were body snatching problems in the nineteenth century because
medical schools needed bodies, right they You couldn't in the
nineteenth century. By the nineteenth century, you couldn't vivisect anybody
you weren't supposed to. And also because of the puritanical ideals, Um,
(05:45):
you couldn't do any kind of um dissection on cadavers.
Right now, of course you can, right, which is a
good move, because, like you said, there was a lot
of grave robbing going on to supply the medical schools
who still needed this knowledge. Um. And wanted, and we're
willing to pay grave robbers for it. Time. Do you
remember back in ninety nine when they found some bones,
(06:07):
actually hundred bones in the basement of Medical College of Georgia. Really, yeah,
I did not know that. Yeah, they were they dated
back to the nineteenth century, and they were linked to
um rob graves. Yeah. That's crazy, isn't it? It is
so well, you know, that's if you're dealing with kidavers
if you're there. Also, if you wanted to experiment on
(06:29):
a live um living thing, then you would now have
to go the route of like chimps and rabbits and
mice rats, right, which actually, what we've done, from what
I understand, is with human experimentation, we've put lower making
air quotes here, lower species in between us and initial discovery. Right. Yeah.
(06:53):
The problem was back in the day though, they did
the same thing, but they considered lower species other humans
specifically convicts, yeah, or poor are in destitute, diseased, Yeah exactly,
but convicts for sure, convicts have pretty much always gotten
it pretty bad, um as far as human experimentation goes.
But yeah, um, so these days we we do put
h rabbits and rats and and um, chimps and macaques
(07:16):
and in between us and um, you know, not knowing
what a drug will do or something like that. But really,
ultimately it still ends up to humans. And one of
the reasons why is because you know, you can't you
they we don't even know whether or not animals experience happiness,
you know, do they How can we figure out if
(07:36):
they're hallucinating? Yeah? Sure, they can't help self report. Yeah,
you gotta ask questions every now and then. Right, and
then also, I mean, if you're doing if you're making
a drug for humans, you eventually have to find out
exactly what it does to humans. It's not gonna have
the same effect on a rat, although it will probably
be close. And what we'll get into that in a minute.
All right, should we talk about some of the horrific
(07:57):
things that have happened throughout our history? Judge, Well, don't
forget the whole him. There's another there's another route you
could take it self experimentation, Yes, living your living self,
experimenting on yourself, which I mean there have been some
famous examples of this. Yes. Famously, Pierre and Mary Curie
earned a Nobel Prize in Physics from radiation research, and
(08:19):
they did this pie taping radium salts to their skin
and seeing what happened. So that's one way to do it.
Another guy who famously tried his his research out on
himself as Albert Hoffman, the guy who created LSD, right,
and apparently he had a diary where he writes about
his bike ride home after injecting himself with LSD and
(08:40):
he had no bike. No, he had a bike, but
he was like, Wow, nothing is real And I really
feel like listening to pink Floyd right now. Yeah, yet
to be discovered, pink Floyd yet to be born. I
think even um so Chuck self experimentation has its own flaws, right,
if you're vivisecting an eyeball and you do it to yourself,
(09:04):
you can't do that more than once. You probably wouldn't
even do it that one time, yea. So really there
is a lot to be gained from vivisecting human beings. Well,
we don't do it. And one of the reasons why
is because it's horrific. So yes, let's talk about some
of the horrific human experiments that litter history. Jay Mary
(09:24):
and Simms. Is that name? Ringabelle No? That is uh
considered to be the father of gynecology. Oh yeah, Jay
Mary and Sims, Sims and uh. He even became the
president of the A M A and eighteen seventy six.
But he developed um experimental surgeries by testing them on
(09:45):
African slaves many times without anesthesia. Yeah, dark side for sure, man. Yeah,
I would definitely call that a dark side. Yeah. He
gets lauded probably in many circles still today he does. Um. Apparently,
Uh that was we think of the Nazis especially, and
we'll talk about them in a minute. But the US
has a really shady history of human experimentation. Um. A
(10:08):
guy named Dr Leo Stanley Uh injected prisoners at San
Quentin with animal testinges too uh slow or reverse aging,
which did not work out. Um, Cholerado experiments on the
Philippines conducted by US nineteen fifteen, Palagra experiments in Mississippi, right. Uh.
(10:29):
And then apparently we were talking about how prisoners have
always gotten a bad rap up. Until the nineteen seventies
in the United States, pretty much all pharmaceuticals were tested
on convicts. You did not want to break a law. Now,
I wonder you know how people hearken back to like
the the Golden Age when there was less crime and
(10:50):
less violence and all that. I wonder how much of
it had to do with the fact that if you
went to prison, like you would be experimented on. Yeah,
I wonder if you know that, though it probably wasn't
why they reported. Until you get to prison. Then you're like,
oh oops, yeah that's yeah. Had I known, right, but
I imagine recitativism rates what what's a bone head word?
We're pretty low. Yeah, you're probably right, so chuck. You know. Also,
(11:13):
the United States was huge into compulsory sterilization, right, I
did not know that the eugenics movement. Okay, so between
I guess the early nineteen hundreds, the first decade of
the twentieth century up until the seventies, I think maybe
the ninety one, uh sixty four thousand people in the
United States were sterilized against their will, like epileptics, the
(11:37):
mentally handicapped, blind, deaf, mutes, um schizophrenics, and Native Americans
against their will, sometimes unknowingly unbelievable. Yeah, which you could.
That's not necessarily an experiment because you know exactly what's
gonna happen. The prison is going to be sterilized. But um,
if you look at it as eugenics, it's it is
(11:59):
kind of larger experiment to basically created great race and
then the eugenics the popularity. I mean it was well
known this was going on. This was in a secret
government program like mk ultra, right, and there was public
support for it until World War Two, which remember actually
can you remember to the future, Yes, when we talk
about mercenaries, right, World War Two changed everything we did. Yeah,
(12:23):
the Nazis really lead the way when it comes to
human experimentation. Um, as everyone knows against the Jews, Gypsies,
anyone they felt like targeting. They would do things like
freezing them to research hypothermia and then actually came it
became huge later their hypothermia research is like really used
still yeah, well we'll get into the ethics. Uh. They
(12:46):
put them in the compression chambers to test the effects
of high altitude flight, which it doesn't get much worse
than that, and a sterilization experiments as well, like the
US was doing. They would use a phosphorus incendiary phosphorus
devices to figure out how to treat phosphorus burns. Japan
was another country. Their Unit seven thirty one very famous
(13:06):
unit reportedly killed more than ten thousand Chinese, Korean, and
Russian POWs to develop biological weapons and tests of stuff
out on them basically, right. Um. So the Nazis in
particular face the music at Nuremberg, right um. And there
was this part to the Nuremberg trials called the Doctor's trials. Uh.
(13:27):
And I think a bunch of the guys, like seventeen
were convicted, and most of them I think were hanged. Yeah, um.
And a lot of these guys cases were Dude, we
didn't break any laws. There's no lawful outline of what
to do when you're experimenting on a human, and a
lot of this stuff followed the same kind of protocol
(13:47):
that we had before the war, right right, which is
just horrendous, but in a lot of cases it was
actually true. Right. So one of the results of the
Nuremberg Trial was the Nuremberg Code, where the international community said,
all right, we need to outline some some guidelines for
human experimentation. And if I think there's like ten points
(14:09):
to it, ten large overviews UH to human experimentation guidelines,
and it focuses on UM reducing UH, fear and pain
discomfort in the experiment. Subjects that can't be coerced, that
has to be willing, that have to be informed. What's
this covered by? What's that under? You know, like what
document or organization that's under I don't know, probably the
(14:33):
u WIN. I would think the u N would have
something to do with that. But yes, but it's very
famous called the Nuremberg Code, right, and it solves like
the moral quandary uh jevercy Um extreme measures, Gene Hackman,
Hugh Grant, all right, so you know, like in the end,
I think they're in a sewer somehow. Gene Hackman's like,
if you had to kill one to save a million,
(14:54):
wouldn't you have to do it? And so the Nuremberg
Code solves that. And the answer, by the way, is no,
you wouldn't kill one. Yeah, that's the old, the age
old question, though, right, kill one to save many, which
is a very utilitarian view of of looking at things like, yes,
you kill one person to save a million, of course
you do, but we as an international collective have decided
that you don't do that. One person's life is worth
(15:17):
as much as a million people's potential lives. So that
brings us to The real quandary that with human experimentation
is what do you do with this information that has
gained from these awful, awful experiments. Um. A lot of
detractors will say that to use this information supports human experimentation, right,
But then another way of looking at it is to
(15:39):
propose like kind of do a thought experiment of all right,
let's say that you are you walk in on one
of these experiments. You say, your death is inevitable and
it's going to be a painful, horrible death. But you
can choose whether or not this data that was that
your results from your death is suppressed or used. Which
one do you want? And then you know that most
(16:01):
people would say, well, if I'm going to die anyway,
I would want this data to be used. That's the
argument the other side uses, Yeah, the US cut a
little deal though with you one. I know we were
it's such we have such a shady history, like we
used Nazi scientists to get us to the moon. Well,
this was particularly to keep it from falling into the
wrong hands. So we thought, hey, rather than give that
(16:22):
to the Russians Une, let's cut a deal where the
officers responsible for this good immunity from prosecution and war crimes,
and we get the data, and we'll even give you
a little stipend. Yeah, on the side, we'll give you
some money probably way to come up with those biological weapons.
Nicely done. Um, Like we said, the Nazi hypothermia experiments,
(16:44):
which were pretty brutal apparently, um the they would put
you in an icy vat of water with a thermometer
in erectum and they found that most people died, went
unconscious and died around when their body temperature seventy degrees fahrenheit. Right, yeah,
it's it's such a useful information. But no, the useful
information came in they were looking for ways to revive
(17:07):
people suffering from hypothermia because the Germans were losing so
many people on the Eastern Front in Germany. Um that
they actually did figure out ways of quickly reviving people
suffering from hypothermia. So hypotherp post war hypothermia researchers are like, dude,
these people, as ghastly as these experiments are, they figured
(17:28):
out how to revive people suffering from hypothermia. We need
that information. So I think with with that, UM, I
guess that group leading the charge Nazi data has been
used in a lot of ways, but then there it
should be cited, I think was the compromise that they
came up with. Yeah, and it actually worked the other
way to Jewish doctors would later study um victims of
(17:52):
starvation in the ghetto and the word slaw ghetto and
they use that to aid in the study of UM
hunger associated disease. So they found a way to use
it at least. And so we were talking also about
how the US has a nice long history of horrible
stuff like the Tuskegee experiments. You want to talk about that. Yes,
(18:14):
a forty year study of a syphilis began in nineteen
thirty two, and they use African Americans who sought treatment
for this disease, and they basically straight up lied and
deceived them thinking they were being treated. Right. They they
actually didn't use any kind of medical intervention because they
wanted to watch the progression of syphilis. Yeah, they want
to see it gets worse, and so they could chart
(18:36):
everything out and they had no idea. And then I
guess finally in uh No, the US issues a public
apology for for this and there's still some people alive
who were experimented on unbelievable. Yeah, and you know, we've
we've documented the LSD experiments that unsuspecting Americans were dosed
(18:57):
and the mk Ultra project. We did a whole show
on that. Didn't me Yeah, it was like our best one,
didn't we did you forget? Well it was a long
time ago, so yeah, well you were kind of out
of it if you remember. The beginning of that one
was oh, that's right. Yeah, we did a role playing
so Chuck. There was kind of a huge sea change
(19:19):
in the way that human experimentation was looked at and
carried out when the f d A was established in
the thirties. All of a sudden, there were review boards
and panels. Um, the universities kind of stepped in and said,
all right, we play a big role in this. We're
gonna start establishing stricter oversight of human experimentation. And that's
(19:40):
kind of the course that we've followed since then. Right,
drug trials, drug trials exactly? Do you know any human
guinea pigs? Now I've never done it, but um, you know,
phase one drug trials is usually where you'll get the
most folks, because you need healthy, healthy individuals who are
willing to risk their health for money and basically what
they're doing in these phase one trial or you know
(20:01):
when you see these commercials that rattle off a hundred
side effects, they're positively frightening. They get these from giving
these uh these medications to people and seeing what happens. Basically, Yeah,
Robert Lamb put it really well. He said that if
your bottle of medication says that it might result in
bowl bowel control problems or suicidal thoughts, you can bet
that someone received a paycheck for experiencing them at some
(20:23):
point exactly. So that's what they know. So that's phase one.
Phase two deals with dosing and efficiency, and phase three
enlist um actual patients who need this treatment, not not
healthy people, and people who volunteer for phase one clinical
trials are uh handsomely paid depending on the risk involves.
(20:44):
That's one of the problems. Yeah, And I mean it's
kind of like a vacation. You're you're fed, and you're
put up maybe in a hotel or the hospital room
has um like a video game console, you watch movies
or whatever, and they just shoot you full of something
and then come in like every fifteen minutes or hour
whatever and say, you know, like have you seen that
leopard can you were talking to earlier again, you know,
(21:07):
that kind of stuff. But that's one of the problems
is that some of these folks bounced from experiment to
experiment and you know, kind of make a half asked
living off of this, right, I guess you can. I mean,
especially if you're dedicated. He talks about Lamb talks about
a an article in The New Yorker that is about
it's called guinea pigging, I believe, and it's about this
(21:28):
soap culture of clinical drug trial participants who have their
own like publications that show like who's what upcoming drug
trials are, are are in the pipeline and how much
they're gonna pay and that kind of stuff. So there's
a concern that, like, yeah, these people are kind of
hooked on this lifestyle. My thing is is like to
(21:50):
each his own, sure, you know, yeah, I mean, if
they're if there are no laws being broken and they're
getting paid and they're willing to do this instead of
going to get a chop delivering pizzas, then you know, frankly,
if they can get my pizza to me and stay safe,
not harm other people, and deliver a delicious pizza. Still
I don't care if they're in the midst of a
(22:10):
drug trial. Right. Then, here's another thing I didn't know
that I thought was interesting in this article is that
they kind of put the pedal to the metal when
it comes to these trials because a US drug patent
only last for twenty years, and so if you're hung
up for a decade and research and testing, which can happen,
then that they don't start it over once you get
it approved. You've got only ten years left to make
(22:33):
you know, serious money, and they speed these things along.
They do. Now, if you're running it through university, they
generally have well, universities have a reputation for being total
sticklers when it comes to um institutional review boards, right um.
So as a result, I think that a lot of
drug companies have found that if you run it instead
(22:54):
through a private organization that does the clinical trials for you,
and then all of a sudden, you can walk around
all out of these ethical guidelines or you know, safe
conditions and yet again outsourcing to private contractors for money.
It's uh, just it's the way to get around things exactly.
(23:15):
So that's medical experimentation. There's a this is a really
cool article. It's slightly outside of the how Stuff Works voice.
Robert Lamb put his all in all into it. He
put his Lamb stamp on it. He did at the
very least. You gotta read paid zero, and I defy
you to just repaid zero. For those of you out there,
a page zero is really page one. We just that's
the insider lingo here and we still Chuck and I
(23:36):
have worked here for more than two years and we've
still never figured out why they call it paid zero.
So if you want to read paid zero of how
Human Experimentation Works, you can type in human experimentation in
the handy search bar at how stuff Works dot com.
And I guess you could say that that leads us
to listener. May. Yes, Josh, this is about in our
(24:00):
Co States. I remember Narco States. I'm gonna call it
a Narco state email. Uh, this is from Christer who
Actually you had to write Christer back and say are
you're a boy or a girl because I've never heard
that name? And Christos a dude. So Christo says I
currently live in Wires, Mexico. What yeah, exactly, because we
(24:21):
covered wires pretty thoroughly. Yeah, it is sad to stand
out as a dangerous narco zone rather than being recognized
for a decent achievement. Uh, but things here are indeed
pretty crazy. Murders are super high, and I've tragically lost
some friends throughout the year. As if this wasn't enough,
even the government is messing with us, as I had
an experience last July my parents happened on a clothing shop.
(24:43):
We were asked by some federal agents to give out
a big amount of money two d and fifty thousand
U S. Dollars just because, of course, my family refused
to do so. A week later, they came with an
order to close and empty my parents shop and locked
up my dad. We gave a smaller amount just so
he was released and we thought it would just in there.
But to our surprise, a month later, we were surrounded
(25:04):
by about twenty agents holding an apprehension order to take
both of my parents, charging them for supposedly commercializing priate
of clothing, which was a trump up charged I know.
I was left alone with my three younger brothers for
more than three months until the agent on top agreed
to let them out of prison for fifty dollars and
the case was closed. The sick experience, and thank god
(25:26):
it was finally over. Throughout those three months of grief,
you guys were right there with me, and you were
a nice distraction from my awful situation at a time
that was clearly troubling, and I want to thank you
for that. It was probably doesn't mean the same to
you guys, but it was helpful in some way for me.
I no longer want to live in this place, and
I'm just looking forward to moving to the US as
(25:47):
soon as possible, I know. Uh. So we just wanted
to share this and say Merry Christmas. So um, we
had some angry people right in by the way about me,
saying we should just drop the borders and let anyone in.
And I just want to say to those folks, think
about people like Krister here who are just dying to
get to the United States because of of stuff like this,
(26:07):
and the US represents, you know, something, something great to them,
and uh, we shouldn't forget that. So that this I'm
on my high hearts and now I'm getting off of it.
Thanks ju. Do we have a horse effect? Now, let's see,
we've got something close to it. And that would be
(26:29):
weird if you have an email about escaping certain death,
being extorted by the Mexican military, or any kind of
unjust um story, right true. Yeah, you can send it
in an email to stuff podcast at Wait. Happy New Year, everybody, Yeah,
(26:49):
Happy New Year. Be safe. Christoper, We're glad you're alive. Yes,
we're glad. Everybody who made it through two thousand and
nine made it through two thousand nine. Act how stuff
works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
(27:16):
other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Want more
how stuff works, check out our blogs on the house.
Stuff works dot com home page. Brought to you by
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