Essay
Eileen Shaw
Level 3A
3/8/2013
Zach Kelly
Common Read Event Essay
Draft 3
“Human Guinea Pigs”
Last week, I attended a presentation about “Human Guinea Pigs”. It located Gallery lecture room in 11.00am to 1.00pm. This presentation was siren by Beth Lilach. This presentation was about “Human Guinea Pigs” means research involuntary experiments on human beings in the whole world. Many of the medicines were new and the scientists need to test first so the scientists choose the people. The new medicine will have different side effects for the medicine but the scientists really didn’t know about. This experiment are related to many experiments and also related to Henrietta Lacks’ life.
The involuntary experiments were terrible and caused many innocent people to be sacrificed for these experiments. Many people were forced to do experiments for the new medicine and new research for the army or for the country. Some of them were voluntary because they didn’t know the truth of this experiment. People have the rights to control what happens to their body and can ask what will happen next or in the future. This presentation, ‘Human Guinea Pigs’ showed how people were treated in the past and how the medicine was tested in the past for today.
During World War II, many countries tested on people with different new unknown medical and wanted to have all perfect races in their own country and want to get success on the medical for famous. Many countries used the same way to treat the people. At that time, in Germany, the Nazi wants to have supreme races that were all white, with blue eyes and blonde hair. Many of the Nazi tried medicine on innocent people like children, women, old people, prisoner and others. In the Pacific side, the Japanese were inhumane to the people in China and other countries that they invaded. The Japanese soldiers caught to people and forced them to test on the medicine. The Japanese set up a camp for the experiments happen. It is called Unit 731. Inside the camp, many people didn’t know what would happen to them. The people were also afraid of the Japanese because the people know what will happen to they if reject the Japanese. I think this action is foolish because no one is perfect in this world and people didn’t think about the feeling if they were tested and not the others. People need to think about the consequence after and know the right thing to do before doing any action.
This reminds me of Henrietta Lacks. There were many things she didn’t know about and no one tell her about cancer. Involuntary experiments like example take out her cell without her knowing. She also didn’t ask the doctor question even though she has the rights to know what happen to her body. Like example, the doctor didn’t tell she that after took the radium treatment, she would never have any babies in the future. Henrietta lacks love children and she thought she can have more children in the future.
Many other things happen not only in Germany and Japan, but also many other countries that uses abuse way to the innocent people. Many things we can’t control but we can control our decision and rights to do. When people force on you, you can say no or reject them because it is for your own good. No one wants to be tested on some with medicine that you didn’t hear of before. In this presentation, I learned about how the people treated in the past and forced them to do some of the things that involuntary. I choose this presentation because I like to know more about the past and history behind the past. Many things were hidden from people. We need to know the truth and make decision on our own.
“Diagnostic”
I disagree with Robert Bellah that individualism has a bad effect on American society. In my opinion, I think people in the United States work with group or individual, is really depends on the jobs that are related. Some people work on individual can make more things up because when work with group has advantages and disadvantages. It really depends if the group of people that are working or not. Not all people will work together because some of the people are selfish and maybe lazy. For example, in my high school, I needed to work with the groups that were really not working and not suitable for me. Almost all the project I needed to do work and plan by myself but when we received the final score, they will have the same score as mine. It is not fair for me. Working individually does not have a bad effect for the American society but see how you work for that. Some of the people in America believe that self- interest can leads to the best result for the group and individual for the society. Also, many people think that individualism means not being concerned about other people’s feelings and not doing the best for others. This is wrong. Many people work as individual and also care about other people’s feelings. People can have their rights to do what they want and working individually is not bad for the society right now.