Should Death Row Inmates Be Used for Experiments?

[Terminal Blue]

Also, to throw in a scientific argument.

You cannot base a medical experiment on one or two cases, it's not viable. There's a reason unit 731 consumed so many people and that's because (unlike Mengle, who was a lone psycho) they were scientifically rigorous.

In order to make your research effective, you'd need to send more people to death row. A lot more. You wouldn't want to just take what you can get, you'd want a good sample with a range of traits and conditions, which means a you'd need a big prison population to choose from. In fact, to conduct effective trials, you'd have to pretty much reduce the justice system to the role of procurement.

I mean, what would you test anyway? What can you learn from a healthy human body which hasn't been learned before?

And before anyone says 'psychological research'. No. Just no. Drawing samples for psychological research from the prison population is methodological suicide.

But Hitler and Stalin Where bad guys!

Do you really think the guy who sat there and read reports about prisoners having their limbs frozen solid, cut off without anaesthetic and their mutilated torsos used for drug trials until they died and decided 'yup, we'll give these people immunity in exchange for this research' was a 'good guy'?

Exterminas point was that we need to give up on the idea of good guys and bad guys in relation to that time. Everyone was horrible.

 

[Cenequus]

This has been a thought that's rested at the back of my head for quite a while now, and suddenly came back to bite hard at me today. If you've never seen the series Full Metal Alchemist, there's an episode where they enter a supposedly empty research facility and find that it's not only in full operation, but that they've been using inmates from a next-door corrections facility to perform experiments. As draconian as this may sound, it's nonetheless an interestingly controversial subject to consider.

Most death row inmates, AFAIK, have no chance of parole, and sit in their cells for years waiting for their own personally sterilized lethal injection (ironic). Now, while some of these inmates are possibly innocent, most have probably openly admitted to performing unspeakable acts that they cannot or will not possibly atone for within their lifetimes. What I'm wondering is, could we not use these inmates for various experiments, such as testing cures for diseases or maybe just using them for incredibly dangerous procedures a la Aperture Science? Obviously, all necessary measures would have to be taken to ensure the safety of those involved, and to make sure the inmate can't escape.

IMO, these are people who are just taking up space in prisons across the country/world. If we really intend to kill them, why not make their deaths meaningful/beneficial in some way?

EDIT: OK, for the record, I'm not insisting we go out right now and take some of the people on the back of the line of death row, kicking and screaming, and inject them with a dozen diseases "For Science." Obviously, consents would have to be given, considerations would have to be made, and some laws would have to be changed. My point is they're not going anywhere, and appeals aside some death row inmates are simply sitting because the line is massive and they only go through so many injections a day. Again, they're going to be killed anyway, so why not give their deaths some meaning?

EDIT2: Since so many people seem to immediately shout their opposition of the Death Penalty, allow me to add an extra clause: Should people who have been given a Life Sentence (or more) in prison be allowed to consent to experimentation? For those who don't know, depending on where you live in the world, a Life Sentence can be anywhere from 15-30 years before having a chance at parole, with some places having a max sentence of as little as 25 to as many as 50 years. The Consent would come with a small payment that would go to an outside source, and possible consideration of early parole. And obviously, the experiments don't HAVE to be life-threatening, even for the Death Row inmates.

You are't saying something new,until the '40 they we're doing stuff like that testing medicines,profumes,conservants you name it. But with the Ginevra threaty it got kinda illegal you might aswell change your flag emblem to a svastika. Thing is even if death penalty is a delicate issue(UN voted to have it stopped in all countries that are part of UN)a prisoner even a life senteced one only loses his freedom not his dignity as a human beeing. So yeah no humiliation,torture,experiments,testing etc. Going back 100 years I'll call it devolution not evolution.

 

[kouriichi]

Well.... why not? If the experiments are for the betterment of mankind...

If they've been proven to have done something worthy of capital punishment completely beyond doubt, then yes. As far as I'm concerned, they're just bodies while they're on death row.

No, they're still humans with choices. Also, this would be every flavor of unethical, and sounds like the beginning of a dystopian society movie.

If theyre on death row, its for a reason.
Humans are animals, we just forget we are.

A dog bites and injures someone? We put it down. Dogs have choice. They feel pain and can suffer.

What they did to begin with is unethical. :/
Its like the idea that "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind". I doesnt. Youd only have 2 blind people then. Not the entire population. Were to lenient with our punishment these days. Theres no reason for them to not commit a crime. They get free food, a place to live, and TV.

Most of them live better then people i know. And were supposed to call THEM human? After they raped/murdered/butchered/tortured people themselves?

 

[DanielDeFig]

I don't approve of Capital Punishment in the first place, it goes against the most basic human right to live.

So in response to Edit 2 of the OP:

As long as it can be proven that the prisoners consented, and weren't "encouraged" by outside sources (wardens, family, government, etc.), then I think they would have as much right as anyone to volunteer/consent to experimentation.

In fact, I think that as long as it can be psychologically proven that an individual actually consents (without being insane, or persuaded by others), then there should be no restrictions whatsoever as to what kind of experiments we may perform on other human beings.
The problem is, I don't think psychology as a field is advanced enough yet to be able to determine that a person willingly consents to a test that has any real possibility of killing them, without being influenced by their own psychological imbalances, or outside sources.

 

[Chad Hyou]

Would that really make us any better than them?

Receiving the death penalty for a serious crime against humanity is one thing, but using them as test subjects is undervaluing them as human beings, which puts us on the same level as them

 

[Ethan Asia]

Well.... why not? If the experiments are for the betterment of mankind...

If they've been proven to have done something worthy of capital punishment completely beyond doubt, then yes. As far as I'm concerned, they're just bodies while they're on death row.

No, they're still humans with choices. Also, this would be every flavor of unethical, and sounds like the beginning of a dystopian society movie.

What about the people they wronged? Did they consider *them* to be 'humans with choices'?

 

[imnot]

Also, to throw in a scientific argument.

You cannot base a medical experiment on one or two cases, it's not viable. There's a reason unit 731 consumed so many people and that's because (unlike Mengle, who was a lone psycho) they were scientifically rigorous.

In order to make your research effective, you'd need to send more people to death row. A lot more. You wouldn't want to just take what you can get, you'd want a good sample with a range of traits and conditions, which means a you'd need a big prison population to choose from.

I mean, what would you test anyway? What can you learn from a healthy human body which hasn't been learned before?

And before anyone says 'psychological research'. No. Just no. Drawing samples for psychological research from the prison population is methodological suicide.

But Hitler and Stalin Where bad guys!

Do you really think the guy who sat there and read reports about prisoners having their limbs frozen solid, cut off without anaesthetic and their mutilated torsos used for drug trials until they died and decided 'yup, we'll give these people immunity in exchange for this research' was a 'good guy'?

Exterminas point was that we need to give up on the idea of good guys and bad guys in relation to that time. Everyone was horrible.

Oh I misunderstood I tohught you where liek Hitler and Stalin where lovley guys! we are having tea with each other later
But yeah everyone was pretty dicky about then.

 

[Sizzle Montyjing]

No, what if we create a criminal super-human!
OH GOD THE HUMANITY!

No, it's sadistic and cruel, if we do this, then were to we draw the line?
Using people who are fataly ill for target practice?
(of course not, but you get my drift, but they might be used for even more experiments.)

 

[FolkLikePanda]

Yes, yes, yes and whats the word I'm looking for I think it's... YES! They should suffer after all they have caused suffering to someone else. You can say its what the Nazis did but the Nazis did this to innocent people this is what is could happen to people who are guilty. But then theres the doubt factor of whether the persons guilty. But if there was someway to show that someone is 100% guilty then yes let them be the guinea pig to make innocent peoples lives better because quite frankly I couldn't give two flying sexual thrusts towards them.

 

[kouriichi]

Would that really make us any better than them?

Receiving the death penalty for a serious crime against humanity is one thing, but using them as test subjects is undervaluing them as human beings, which puts us on the same level as them

No it doesnt. They raped/murdered/butchered/tortured for no reason other then self gain.
They killed for no reason other then greed/anger/stupidity.

:/ Humans beings are animals. No matter how much we want to deny it, we eat/sleep/poop/f*ck just like almost any other animal on this planet. Yet for some reason we have this special rule that "Humans are better then everything else", when all we do is destroy the world, kill each other in interesting ways, and call everything else inferior.

Look at how we treat animals. You talk about us being on their level, when really, there is no level to be on. Were all animals. Animals kill each other. At least their death ((which normally would be completely pointless)) is giving something back to the community.

 

[Vykrel]

they should be able to volunteer, at least. itd be a chance at some sort of redemption, for them. if i were on death row, with not much time left, i would just volunteer for all the drugs whats there to lose?

 

[zerobudgetgamer]

You cannot base a medical experiment on one or two cases, it's not viable. There's a reason unit 731 consumed so many people and that's because (unlike Mengle, who was a lone psycho) they were scientifically rigorous.

In order to make your research effective, you'd need to send more people to death row. A lot more. You wouldn't want to just take what you can get, you'd want a good sample with a range of traits and conditions, which means a you'd need a big prison population to choose from. In fact, to conduct effective trials, you'd have to pretty much reduce the justice system to the role of procurement.

I never said the experiments had to only have death row inmates/convicts. If anything, I'm saying we should add their results to the "normal" members of society that volunteer for these things. I think there can be a certain amount of benefit juxtaposing the results of a convict with a "normal" member of society, depending on the project. Of course, as I said, procedures would have to be made to ensure the safety of all, including the regular volunteers, the researchers, even the convicts volunteering.

You are't saying something new,until the '40 they we're doing stuff like that testing medicines,profumes,conservants you name it. But with the Ginevra threaty it got kinda illegal you might aswell change your flag emblem to a svastika. Thing is even if death penalty is a delicate issue(UN voted to have it stopped in all countries that are part of UN)a prisoner even a life senteced one only loses his freedom not his dignity as a human beeing. So yeah no humiliation,torture,experiments,testing etc. Going back 100 years I'll call it devolution not evolution.

I know it kinda got hidden under all that text, but I did mention "Consent" somewhere in my post. If anything, what I'm proposing is giving some of a prisoner's freedom back to him. This would allow prisoners to choose to do something with their lives while they're stuck in prison. For the case of Death Row Inmates and potentially lethal experiments, it would allow them to choose their own death as opposed to letting the justice system do it for them. I've also said it plenty of times now, I'm not trying to condone the outright torture of convicts. Perfectly normal members of society join medical trials and suffer the same "torturous" side effects of the things they try. All I'm saying is we give convicts the opportunity to serve humanity by undergoing the same tests and trials, and obviously receive the same consideration that a "normal" person would should something go awry.

 

[Furioso]

Isn't this the plot to about 35% of all horror movies?

Unless the testing involves "Which is better, Chocolate or White Chocolate" then no thanks

 

[Terminal Blue]

Yet for some reason we have this special rule that "Humans are better then everything else", when all we do is destroy the world, kill each other in interesting ways, and call everything else inferior.

"Anything that can be done to a rat can be done to a human being, and we can do almost anything to rats." (William Gibson)

Stop for a moment and think about what you're saying.

Is it 'rational' in the strictest sense to treat humans as any different from rats. No, maybe not, but consider what you lose.. what we all lose by erasing that difference. Because Gibson is absolutely right there, anything which can be done to a rat can be done to you or me, and you know as well as I do what is being done to rats right now.

You can't opt out of being human, no matter how hard you try. It doesn't matter that you just want to experiment on the 'bad people', because the above statement could read: 'Anything that can be done to a convict can be done to you, and we can do almost anything to a convict' and it would not lose its meaning. We could all be on the vivisection table being sliced up without anesthetic right now and the universe would not bat an eyelid, the only thing protecting anyone from that is social prohibition. Don't be so quick to throw that social prohibition away in the name of 'rationality'.

If you stop believing that human life (all human life) has value and dignity, then you have forfeited your right to live with that dignity, and that's not necessarily a world you want to live in.

I never said the experiments had to only have death row inmates/convicts. If anything, I'm saying we should add their results to the "normal" members of society that volunteer for these things. I think there can be a certain amount of benefit juxtaposing the results of a convict with a "normal" member of society, depending on the project. Of course, as I said, procedures would have to be made to ensure the safety of all, including the regular volunteers, the researchers, even the convicts volunteering.

Not really..

This isn't the 19th century. Hereditary criminality has been debunked. All you get by mixing the prison population into a sample is an extremely questionable sample.

 

[ParadoxHunter]

I think that it's perfectly fine to do that, as long as it's optional, and not forced upon them. Of course, now you have the Human Rights brigade on you, saying they are still human beings and they don't deserve to be treated like that.

If I'm going to be honest, they handed in their human rights when they were put on death row in the first place. If whatever they have done is so terrible, that the government sees fit to kill them for it, then clearly they have no moral compass. If they are subjected to extreme agony, perhaps it's fitting punishment for brutally murdering a bunch of innocents. If they die, then it shortens their suffering, and we are doing them a favour by doing so. Besides, who would want to sit there, passing the days by knowing you will die at any moment?

I don't think they understand what it's like to be in death row. Trust me, if I was ever put on death row, I would pick possible death by experiments (that would benefit humanity in the long run), than the agony of knowing I could die any second, regardless of how much pain I could be in.

Also, it has many practical benefits. We can find out more about the human body and how it responds to certain chemicals, it would clear out prisons at a faster rate, it would be a much better deterrent than just death row, for there is a chance they could be put on parole (no idea why people on parole would ever be allowed out), and we could make great advances in medicine, cryogenics, and even prosthetics.

It does sound immoral, but think about it this way: 2000 years ago, it was considered the norm by the Romans to throw slaves into a large arena to be ripped apart by other humans and animals. Morals change too often for them to be taken into account by science. Science is all about certainty, and morals are the antithesis of certainty.

 

[Yopaz]

Human experiments on prisoners? Sure, why not torture them too?
I am against the death penalty, and against torture of prisoners so there's a big fat no on this question.

Also regarding your edits. You should do some research. Shortest complete life sentence is 16 years with parole after 8.

 

[Lenin211]

never without their consent, but if they were willing, then possibly.

 

[relevantcore]

Well.... why not? If the experiments are for the betterment of mankind...

If they've been proven to have done something worthy of capital punishment completely beyond doubt, then yes. As far as I'm concerned, they're just bodies while they're on death row.

No, they're still humans with choices. Also, this would be every flavor of unethical, and sounds like the beginning of a dystopian society movie.

What about the people they wronged? Did they consider *them* to be 'humans with choices'?

Why should we stoop to their level? Isn't that why we consider them evil in the first place? So doing the same to them would consequentially make us evil, right?

 

[Dahni]

As long as prisoners being used are 100% guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt (to prevent an innocent person from being used for experiments), then yes. I say it'd be a good idea. If someone is a major criminal with absolutely no moral compass and a death sentence anyway, why not put them to use? Seems only fair that they give something back to the world they chose to cause havoc in.

I don't think we should even ask their permission to do it, we shouldn't have to, because we're going to kill them regardless of whether or not they wish to die. What difference would it make if we made use of them in the time they spend sitting doing nothing on death row? Whoever they murdered/hurt certainly didn't get a choice in what happened to them so why should the criminal get a choice? I'm not going to get into a debate about it, but the way I see it is that if someone kills someone else with intent for a reason other than self-defence (or for any other reason that would not stand up in court as a reasonable justification), they should have no more human rights. After all, where the hell was the consideration for human rights of the victim by the same person who's suing the prison for violating his human rights? Seems like a double standard to me.