Experimentation on Convicts!

Darth Raptor · Post by **Darth Raptor** » 2006-04-22 11:05pm

In the spirit of the penal battalions thread, what's your view on subjecting convicted criminals to medical and biological experimentation? Assume two things.

1) The state in which this is taking place already has capital punishment. All subjects were previously condemned to death with no realistic hope of appeal.

2) All efforts will be taken to minimize (or completely nullify) pain and suffering. There will be no Nazi experiments testing physical/psychological pain thresholds or anything like that. More like vivisections and experimental treatment tests.

Decide!

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2006-04-22 11:19pm

...How is vivisection NOT a Nazi-esque experiment?

Morilore · Post by **Morilore** » 2006-04-22 11:26pm

I'm not sure its possible to minimize pain and suffering when you're vivisecting someone. But good god, this would be a form of restitution to society that actually means something.

Darth Raptor · Post by **Darth Raptor** » 2006-04-22 11:28pm

DPDarkPrimus wrote:...How is vivisection NOT a Nazi-esque experiment?

They're drugged and unconscious, obviously.

Post by **Simplicius** » 2006-04-22 11:39pm

The option should be presented to them, but it should by no means become part and parcel of their sentence.

Administration of punishment and treatment of prisoners must be consistent. Someone about to commit a crime must know what to expect should they do so, to enable them to adequately make the decision to continue or not. The idea that a punishment is a just remedy to a crime requires that it contain as few arbitrary elements as possible, so that prisoners are not disparately treated for the same crime.

Human experimentation throws these principles out of whack, because by definition the outcome is uncertain - someone testing a new pill may or may not have a severe reaction - and not guaranteed to be equal among all prisoners who are subjected to it.

Because of that disruption to the principles on which a system of legal justice is founded, experimentation on death row prisoners should be voluntary only.

Darth Raptor · Post by **Darth Raptor** » 2006-04-22 11:44pm

So then if it's voluntary there should be benefits/incentives for it? Like "okay, you're condemned to death, but you could live as long as you play lab rat."?

In order for that to be at all enticing, prisoners would either need some altruistic tendencies or a terrifyingly short delay prior to execution.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-04-23 12:24am

Strap them into the electric chair and then hand them the contract and pen.

Patrick Degan · Post by **Patrick Degan** » 2006-04-23 12:59am

Utterly unethical, and so much so that this was precisely what several infamous war criminals went to the scaffold for. Consent doesn't even enter into the picture since the condemned have no real choice while under duress, in a system which can be all too easily abused by the powers-that-be.

Post by **K. A. Pital** » 2006-04-23 02:35am

Unethical and nazish. Just kill them, if you plan to do so anyway. However, what's left of them useful, I mean the organs, should be put to use.

Netko · Post by **Netko** » 2006-04-23 04:01am

I'm against capital punishment on principle (the usual not-100% certanty of guilt, better punishment of rotting the rest of their life in a small cell), so I'm against this. However, if you are going to have capital punishment, organ harvesting and transplantation seems like a resonable component to include in it. No point in wasting all those good organs. Just put him under and start harvesting. Heck, even include a religious exception to that part of the expirience for the fundie fucknuts, so that they can't claim "cruel and unusual " punishment.

Post by **K. A. Pital** » 2006-04-23 04:06am

mmar
Do fundies really preach against harvesting? What's the fucking point? The person is already very much dead, and his soul, for all fundies know, is somewhere beyond this world now... so, how is it a cruel and unusual punishment, if the "punished" is already dead?

Darth Raptor · Post by **Darth Raptor** » 2006-04-23 04:38am

That's the first I've heard of Judeo/Christian/Muslim fundies objecting to organ donation. In fact, the only religion I can think of offhand that would object to such a practice would be like... Egyptians.

Netko · Post by **Netko** » 2006-04-23 04:40am

I'm sure there's more then one religion that has hangups about bodily integrity or some such nonsense. Heck, if you can be so stupid to ban receving transfusions, which may actualy help you live, I'm sure there are idiots banning "desecration" of a dead body. Wouldn't surprise me that they are one and the same actualy. In fact, I think there was something to that effect said in that thread about Japan's low organ transplant numbers.

So, in order to not banish their soul to hell for desecration of their remains or something, a religious waiver can be applied so that they don't get anything to bitch and moan about. Perhaps give perks to those that do decide to allow harvesting by simply following current procedures in both cases. So those being harvested get medical anestetics so that they, in the end, simply go to sleep, while the non-harvesting subjects get the regular coctail, which from what I read, isn't fully painless.

Netko · Post by **Netko** » 2006-04-23 04:43am

EDIT: Anyway, its a minor issue. I wasn't thinking about mainstream religions, but if it was mandatory I'm sure that you would suddenly see mass conversions to some cultish religion that bans it among the death row inmates if they thought that would help them overturn their conviction on "cruel and unusual punishment" grounds, unless you had such a exception in place.

bilateralrope · Post by **bilateralrope** » 2006-04-23 05:42am

mmar wrote:So, in order to not banish their soul to hell<snip>

Wait, wouldn't they of already dammed themselves to hell for the deed they were convited of ?

Lord Zentei · Post by **Lord Zentei** » 2006-04-23 05:49am

Darth Raptor wrote:That's the first I've heard of Judeo/Christian/Muslim fundies objecting to organ donation. In fact, the only religion I can think of offhand that would object to such a practice would be like... Egyptians.

You mean Ancient Egyptians, I imagine - as modern Egyptians are Muslims.

Jehovah's Witnesses object to transplantation, iirc.

Netko · Post by **Netko** » 2006-04-23 06:50am

bilateralrope wrote:
mmar wrote:So, in order to not banish their soul to hell<snip>
Wait, wouldn't they of already dammed themselves to hell for the deed they were convited of ?

Not to derail the thread even more offtopic, but considering some loopholes available to Christians especialy, not necessarily.

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2006-04-23 10:25am

No way in hell, people shouldn't be experimented on in that way, even if they are condemned to die. We aren't Nazis or Imperial Japanese or even early 20th century American scientists from whom the former to groups got many ideas for experiments from. We have some fairly gross experiments on prisoners and the poor in the US as it is. We don't want to repeat that.

Post by **Surlethe** » 2006-04-23 11:56am

Stas Bush wrote:mmar
Do fundies really preach against harvesting? What's the fucking point? The person is already very much dead, and his soul, for all fundies know, is somewhere beyond this world now... so, how is it a cruel and unusual punishment, if the "punished" is already dead?

I'm fairly certain the hangup is from the idea of the great big resurrection when Christ comes back: if your organs have been given away, or if you've been cremated and scattered, then you're not going to have a body to rise from the dead when Christ returns, and you're shit out of luck.

Post by **K. A. Pital** » 2006-04-23 12:38pm

if your organs have been given away, or if you've been cremated and scattered, then you're not going to have a body to rise from the dead when Christ returns, and you're shit out of luck

Who could've thought. Aw the mentality. I guess a great multitude of people are shit out of luck, including some of the "very holy guys" who lost their bodies...

And when there's like, war, is everyone who's blown up shit out of luck too?

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