[1] New York Medical Record, May 25, 1912.
The same experiments appear to have been made in other institutions. In the Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital for August, 1912, there appears an account of this luetin test, made upon patients suffering from such ailments as rheumatic fever, typhoid fever and consumption. We see that the practice has extended to some of the leading hospitals of the United States.
The defence of all hospital experimentation upon children and adults, other than procedures for their own benefit, is usually grounded upon (1) the absence of any severe injury, and (2) the value of the results obtained. The defenders of the Noguchi experiments insist that the disease was not transmitted; that there was no severe pain or permanent injury; and that the inoclation with dead germs of syphilis could not have caused an infection with the dread disease. This is probably true; although the excuse of painlessness cannot be fairly put forward regarding the tuberculin experiments upon the eye. But should we overlook the fact that these tests, at first were purely experimental in character? No absolute assurance of results could have been declared in advance; if certainty existed beforehand, what would be the use of experimenting upon so many human beings? Are experiments upon man only reprehensible when injury follows? Do we apply this rule to the engineer of a passenger-train, who again and again runs by a danger-signal, and yet escapes a tragedy?
The utility of experimentation is urged. Only by experiments upon human beings, it is said, could the value of either the tuberculin test or the Noguchi emulsion be definitely determined. But surely every thinking man must realize that utility cannot exculpate, or justify the use of any method which is otherwise wrong in itself. A murder is not regarded as pardonable, because thereby the interests of religion are advanced. Dr. Noguchi for instance, admits that although it is almost certain that the germs which Schaudinn discovered and which he has isolated and grown outside the human body, are the cause of specific disease, yet scientific certainty can only be acquired by producing the ailment from the artificially cultivated germs. He says:
"While there are few, to-day, who would deny that the Treponema
pallidum is the causitive agent of syphilis, YET THE FINAL PROOF CAN
ONLY BE BROUGHT FORTH THROUGH THE REPRODUCTION OF SYPHILITIC LESIONS
BY MEANS OF PURE CULTURES OF THE MICRO-ORGANISM."[1]
[1] "Studies of the Rockefeller Institute," vol. xiv., p. 100.
A scientific experiment upon a human being of greater interest than this it is hardly possible to imagine. With germs invisible to the naked eye, grown in a flask, will some future experimenter be able to produce in a human being all the terrible symptoms of this worst scourge of the human race? That the experiment will be tried, there can be no doubt; experiments involving the inoculation of the same horrible disease, have been made both in America and in Europe. But does anyone think that the utility of this suggested experiment of Dr. Noguchi would justify its being made upon an unsuspicious patient in a charity hospital? Would it be likely to meet general approbation, even in our day, if it were performed upon an infant in a Babies' Hospital? And yet why should it be criticized, if utility to science is a sufficient excuse?
It is a significant fact, that every writer who attempts to defend or to excuse the experiments here described and others of the same type, always evades the principal reason for their condemnation. The condemnation of what may be called "human vivisection" rests chiefly upon its incurable injustice.
ALL SUCH EXPERIMENTS VIOLATE ONE OF THE MOST SACRED OF HUMAN RIGHTS. Every man, not a criminal, has the inherent right to the inviolability of his own body, except for his own personal benefit. Apply this to the experiments herein described.
THEY IMPLY A SUPPRESION OF THE TRUTH. Is it probably that any mother, bringing to a hospital her ailing child, would leave it there without apprehension if she were distinctly informed that when it had partly recovered, it would be used for experimentation relating to a test for syphilis?