"Dr. Mary's Monkey"

[Jan Klimkowski]

The Scientific Method is a way by which knowledge may be gained by experimentation or observation, using inductive and deductive reasoning to develop hypotheses and then theories, and after that, laws (such as the Law of Thermodynamics) which are universally applicable. It does not necessarily have to be morally or ethically correct, but simply truthful. In that sense, Science is without morality; it is not moral nor immoral, but is AMORAL (without morality). What is scientifically true is true everywhere, in the US, UK, Canada, France, South America, Asia, Africa, Australia, Artica, Anartica, on the oceans and waterways, in the atmosphere, outer space, under identical conditions. Cultural, political, economic, social, religious, and other attitudes determine the usefulness or non-usefulness of scientific work as ethical or moral in human society.

The word "science" is derived from sciencia which means knowledge.

Adele

Adele - agreed, with caveats.

Earlier in this thread, I posted the phrase from 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...

The Rocket has many potential uses. The scientists developing rocket technology cannot necessarily determine how The Rocket will be used.

However, they can make a moral choice that, in their judgement, the potential destructive use of a scientific development outweighs its potential beneficial uses, and thus choose not to contrbute to the process of scientific development. Some physicists made such a choice in the context of the atomic bomb.

Fundamentally, though, the manner in which scientific research is conducted is absolutely a moral matter.

Rocket scientists in Nazi Germany used slave and concentration camp labourers at research sites such as Peenemunde. This was criminal and immoral.

Similarly, I have made films exposing Big Pharma's use of "human guinea pigs" in developing countries in Phase III clinical trials of new drugs. These poverty ridden test subjects were exposed to an experimental drug without meaningful clinical oversight or medical support. In one of the trials some women died and others went blind. This information was then left out of the papers published in clinical journals, designed to give the new drug the all-clear for use across the world.

The conduct of these scientific experiments was criminal and immoral. In addition, science was not advanced because negative side effects (death and blindness) were not reported in the official reports of the trials.

So, to LSD.

It is clear that in the 1940s and 50s intelligence agencies across the world were using scientists to identify and develop truth serums. LSD was originally researched in this context.

If Gordon Thomas' memo to Eric Olson (posted above) is considered credible, and I do consider it credible, then it is likely that many of those early LSD interrogations were conducted on - to use Thomas' phrase - "expendable SS" types.

The doctors involved in those experimental truth serum interrogations which had ended in the death of the subject would have known that this was terminal human experimentation. They would have had to form a judgement was to whether the attempt to develop a truth serum for use in interrogation justified the death of a human being.

In my judgement, this was an immoral act.

It is clear that most of the "MK-ULTRA" (in the broad sense) scientific leaders made a different moral judgement, and considered terminal experimentation acceptable.

Frank Olson appears to have disagreed, and considered it immoral.

Frank Olson was therefore "suicided".