"Dr. Mary's Monkey"

[Jan Klimkowski]

After Roy's lecture about his work, Dr. Heath had asked Roy if he would be interested in interviewing his special patient (I think there was only one person who had 125 electrodes implanted; others had only a few). Initially, Roy was most interested because here was a conscious and communicating human being who could describe what was going on at any particular time in his mind. But when Roy met this man, he told me he was so revolted and with so much pity for this poor creature that he could not bring himself to ask any of the questions he wanted to ask. He just thanked Heath for the opportunity and left.

Needless to say, I was appalled. Roy and I continued our discussion about Heath and I told him what I had learned. It was quite a visit.

Adele

Adele - many thanks for sharing those memories.

Scientific and medical research cannot be blind to the means used to achieve breakthrough.

Further, the tragedy of science is that many discoveries can be used both for good and evil.

My favourite articulation of this crucial insight, quoted earlier in this thread, is from Thomas Pynchon's masterpiece, Gravity's Rainbow:

a good rocket to take us to the stars, an evil rocket for the World's suicide, the two perpetually in struggle...

There's a DPF thread on the murder of Frank Olson which you may find worth reading in its entirety here.

Having reviewed the evidence and spoken with Frank Olson's son, my working hypothesis is that Frank Olson was murdered because he was aware of terminal human experiments being conducted by British and/or American researchers, and he became unwilling to keep this knowledge secret.

In short, Frank Olson has made a decision based on conscience, and was about to blow the whistle. For this, his life was ended.