Science is a truly wonderful thing and has benefitted society and humanity itself in many unimaginable ways. These benefits though require a quite high cost, and that cost is paid in lives. Examples of this can be found all over the world but today we are going to touch on areas such as Germany, Russia and the United States of America. First on the chopping block is Germany where we can take a look back to the date March 22,1933 this is when the first concentration camp of World War 2 opened though this camp was at first used for political prisoners it would one day become just like all the other camps. Who contained doctors who would discover new medical discoveries in inhumane ways. Topics pertaining to science and medical effects on the human body that were discovered as a result of these camps are things such as how low of temperatures the human body can endure before succumbing to hypothermia. They also are the gold standard of recording high altitude exposure results as today there will be no candidates for such studies. They also were the very early inventors or users of what is known commonly today as “euthanasia” and on top of this no Nazi German physicians of this time can claim they didn’t realize what they were doing was wrong as Germany was the first country in the world to mandate and implement an ethics class in every medical school.
These are some physical tests done on humans though after enduring outside factors while horrors committed by America were arguably one of the most inhumane and this is not touching on the topic of what they did to prisoners but instead the effects of their creations. These creations were both used and destroyed the same day they were deployed one occurring on August 6th and the other on August 9th in 1945. We simply know those dates today as the days that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings took place. This bombing was approved and executed by the 509th composite group and known as the Manhattan project which is a whole subject on its own. This group’s sole purpose though was to research and Soley create the first atomic weapon, and they achieved this goal quite well. These bombs were named “Little Boy” and “fat man” and are the bombs that killed around 246,000 people. On top of that those murdered were both civilians, soldiers, and even our own soldiers who were being held as prisoners of war. These bombs unveiled new medical discoveries as doctors had no choice other than to learn how large amounts of radiation affects the human body. They learned how it decomposes the body at a rapid pace if the body was exposed to a high enough dosage and even if it didn’t directly affect you and you were to have a spouse exposed to radiation or even came into contact with it accidentally the affects could still be devastating. From cancer cells suddenly occurring a few years down the road with no family history of it to giving birth and the child suffering serious deformities as much as the bombings were horrifying the after affects will forever be a reason why medical and industrial science progressed as fast as it did.
Our next discussion however was performed by Russia’s scientist who belonged to the Soviet Union, and they did it directly and deliberately to learn the most effective ways to kill people via poisonings most of these were destroyed and discontinued for obvious reasons. Some even had samples of them taken by the United States to see if they could be used usefully but one of their most deadly yet useless poisons was created during this period too. This was why the poison Novichok came into existence it is a nerve agent that affects the heart and slows it while also paralyzing the muscles that we use to breathe and almost always when being used its purpose is to kill as it was developed to be used for warfare and for undetected kills. Novichok is also specifically the topic I’m touching on because although it’s known for one purpose it is still an exception because they were never declared while most nerve agents became restricted during the “1997 chemical weapons convention” and most importantly being included because although it was created for harm it has only successfully killed one person thankfully and is very hard for the public to access.
I absolutely love learning about stuff like this. I usually watch those dumb bright side videos, but I’d love to see you talk about this more!