8 Shockingly Unethical Experiments That Actually Happened
Poison, shocks, and state-sanctioned euthanasia - the dark side of science in the 20th century.
Science has done some truly incredible things, saving billions of lives, and improving the quality of billions more. But it has also done some terrible things.
Nowadays, there are strict rules dictating how we conduct experiments, and these are in place to protect participants and prevent wildly unethical research from taking place. These rules, however, were mostly introduced in response to some seriously morally questionable experiments that occurred, mostly in the 19th and 20th centuries, when we were really starting to get to grips with the scientific method.
Experiments on children, animals, racial minorities, and the mentally ill all simultaneously pushed the boundaries of scientific understanding and human ethics - people were poisoned, shocked, mutilated, mentally scarred, and even killed by these practices.
Some of these experiments did actually teach us something, albeit at a terrible cost, but many others were simply tragic and barbaric wastes of time and life.
The scientific leaps and discoveries we have made since the strict ethical code has been imposed on science demonstrate that the means do not necessarily justify the ends. This said, there are still many ethical debates raging in science to this day, so perhaps we'll look back on the 21st century with equal shock and horror some day.