The Poisoned Apple

The virus was slowly taking over. There was so much death around, and there were only casualties and spectators. No savior, no idea for a cure. But the doctor knew his idea was crazy enough to work as he administered his preparation containing the infection to young James. The doctor was right. His inoculation, given two months prior, had worked its magic, and James Phipps became known in history as the first recipient of a vaccine. Dr. Edward Jenner had saved humanity. But he could very well have killed his gardener’s son, and very few people would be privy to the heinous experiment. We had taken yet another bite from the poisoned apple of knowledge.

The orchards of knowledge

Science has often been described as the ‘how’ to Philosophy’s ‘why’. Science, as a method of looking at the world, does not possess any ethical dimension; however, it is a human project. Consequently, our current state of scientific achievement is a product of our history, and needless to say, history is never spotless clean. More than 150 years after Jenner’s work with the variola virus (smallpox), Saul Krugman made the critical discovery that hepatitis A and B diseases were caused by two ‘immunologically distinct’ viruses. Krugman’s experiments were conducted on children with intellectual disabilities at Willowbrook State School in New York City. The protocol? Feeding them drinks laced with fecal matter infected with hepatitis. Whether the team received any form of consent from these children’s parents remains murky. On the other hand, the hepatitis B vaccine, a direct result of Krugman’s highly questionable research methods, has saved millions. Human ‘guinea pigs’ within the dreary confines of Philadelphia’s notorious Holmesburg prison were, by contrast, aware of their involvement in clinical experiments. They were even paid for their ‘discomfort’. However, they did not know what was tested on them. The fact that the inmates were primarily racial minorities, regularly cowering under the authorities, being paid only a few cents a day for their prison labor, did little to make things better. Albert Kligman and his colleagues tested a wide range of chemicals including mind altering drugs, herbicides like dioxin, mouthwashes, and toothpastes and most famously the anti-wrinkle and acne-removal cream, Retin A. As humanity desperately tried to stave off aging and erase blemishes from their bodies in a global crusade of mild vanity, the burns and scars from the horrendous ‘patch tests’ on the skins of Holmesburg’s prisoners were forgotten with ease.

Perhaps the single most important milestone in the road to women’s liberation, the birth control pill, has a similar history. Gregory Pincus, a Harvard scientist who openly espoused conservative views on sexual freedom among masses, was merely trying to address a ‘scientific problem’; he had no interest in societal implications. The first mass clinical trials were performed on poor, uneducated women in Puerto Rico with the blessings of the governor, who was worried about the steep rise in “the most vicious, most ignorant, and most helpless and hopeless part of the population”. Although, the participants knew the purpose of the trial, they were not compensated, and were likely not aware of the experimental nature of the drug. Such a trial would not be, in any way, permissible now but it highlights the degrees in which ethical lapses can occur. No honest person would equate this incident to Krugman’s Willowbrook experiments. But where do you, dear reader, place the Holmesburg trials in this spectrum? Was it worth taking a small bite even if the apple was poisoned? On the other end, not all incidents had silver linings. When the US public health services studied the progression of Syphilis in African-American patients for four decades, without providing available cures like penicillin, under the guise of free healthcare, they were likely hoping for some ‘end’ that would justify the ‘means’. Unfortunately, the poisoned apple was rotten too. No significant knowledge was generated, but numerous innocent families were destroyed at the altar of science.

As humanity desperately tried to stave off aging and erase blemishes from their bodies in a global crusade of mild vanity, the burns and scars from the horrendous ‘patch tests’ on the skins of Holmesburg’s prisoners were forgotten with ease.

Some of you have recoiled at the ghastly history of some of science’s biggest advancements, but most of you might be experiencing a mild unease that arises from uncertainty. What you are experiencing is illustrated by the famous trolley problem in moral philosophy, which presents the following simple scenario. A trolley is hurling toward five people on its track and the only way to save them is to pull a lever that will switch the trolley to another track on which stands a single person. Reality, as it appears, is even more deadly than this bleak thought experiment. Did Krugman or Pincus know for certain that their research would bear fruit? Didn’t the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male” start with a dream of a major breakthrough? In reality, we do not know if pulling the lever in the trolley problem will save those five people after all. Is it therefore better to seek forgiveness than ask for permission?

The serpent’s gift

From the birth of ARPANET, the summer of love at the Woodstock music festival, the Vietnam war protests to the grisly Manson murders, 1969 was one of the most eventful years in American history. But the moon landing dwarfed all in significance. Armstrong, Aldrin, Collins, and Apollo 11 became part of pop culture. But what about Wernher von Braun, the man behind the Saturn V rocket that launched these astronauts into space? Von Braun, a member of the Nazi paramilitary group, SS, was recruited by NASA along with other Nazi scientists, as part of Operation Paperclip. They likely brought with them a treasure trove of Nazi aerospace research that helped establish American dominance in the space race. Was it okay to provide ex-Nazis with so much institutional power? Nazi research performed in gruesome concentration camps that were lapped up by the US included insecticide and chemical weapon, Sarin, and drugs like chloroquine and methadone. Nazi physician, Eduard Pernkopf’s book on human anatomy was the to-go text for most surgeons until as recently as 1990 as it contains some of the most detailed medical illustrations ever made. The countless successful surgeries and mended bodies were, however, indebted to the thousands murdered in Nazi camps; whose corpses provided the elegant composites in Dr. Pernkopf’s book. Should we have rejected one of the best works in anatomy merely because the source was morally repugnant?

Science, as a method of looking at the world, does not possess any ethical dimension; however, it is a human project.

31-year-old Henrietta Lacks did not perish in the macabre camps of Auschwitz or Dachau. She died of cervical cancer in a sanitized ward of Johns Hopkins. Some of her cells, now known as HeLa cells, turned out to be immortal. The HeLa cell line has been used in more than 100,000 scientific papers and has been central in the fight against a plethora of deadly diseases such as cancers, HIV-AIDS, tuberculosis, polio, and in understanding fundamentals of biology. Her cells were taken from her without her knowledge or the permission of her family, although according to the hospital, consent laws were not as stringent in those days. Is moral sense contingent on codified laws? The use of Nazi scientists and their aerospace technologies, inventions tested on Nazi prisoners and Henrietta Lacks’ cells without compensation, represent distinct points on the same spectrum. When the serpent tempted the first biblical humans to take bites from the apple, its intention was moral corruption. But with it came the thirst for knowledge. Should we let it go?

Clara Immerwehr, the first woman recipient of a Ph.D in Chemistry in Germany, thought so. A life-long pacifist and civil rights activist, she was an outspoken critic of her Nobel laureate husband, Fritz Haber’s research into poisonous gases for use in the German war effort. Unlike Pincus’ attitude toward the development of the birth control pill, she saw a moral dimension to science, and is thought to have committed suicide, at least in part, due to related arguments with her husband. Stalwarts like Arthur Galston and Leo Szilard actively campaigned against the military use of their research, believing firmly that a scientist’s “responsibility to society does not cease with publication of a definitive scientific paper.” But once a discovery is out in the world, can the scientist lay claim to its ownership? The father of cybernetics, Norbert Wiener, refused to help the military and corporations in automation research, citing the potential replacement of low-skilled workers by machines. However, progress is a juggernaut; even the brilliant mind of Wiener couldn’t have foreseen the shift in technology space and the creation of millions of jobs as a result of automation. The dystopian imagination of George Orwell’s omnipresent surveillance or Aldous Huxley’s human hatcheries have been realized to a large extent, within the span of a few decades. The internet and satellite communication have allowed greater connectivity, whereas in vitro fertilization has filled the empty laps of countless couples. Technologies imagined to be the seeds of evil have borne beautiful fruits. Will He Jiankui, the creator of the first CRISPR-edited humans, be remembered as the poster child of unethical science or be hailed as the prophet of a new era of scientific exploration?

The poisoned apple is in your hands. Want a bite?

Author:

Saurja Dasgupta is originally from Kolkata, India. He obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, where he studied the structure, function, and evolution of catalytic RNA. He is currently doing his postdoctoral research at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, where he is trying to understand the biochemical milieu that could have given birth to life on earth (and elsewhere) and reconstruct primitive cells. One of his scientific dreams is to observe the spontaneous emergence of Darwinian evolution in a chemical system.  When not thinking about science, Saurja pursues his love for the written word through poetry and song-writing (and meditating on Leonard Cohen’s music). His other passions are trying to make science easier to understand, and fighting unreason and pseudoscientific thinking with a mixture of calm compassion and swashbuckling spirit.

Editors:

Sumbul Jawed Khan received her Ph. D. in Biological Sciences and Bioengineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, where she studied the role of microenvironment in cancer progression and tumor formation. During her post-doctoral research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she investigated the gene regulatory networks that are important for tissue regeneration after damage or wounding. She is committed to science outreach activities and believes it is essential to inspire young people to apply scientific methods to tackle the challenges faced by humanity. As an editor, her aim is to simplify, translate, and excite people about the current advances in science.

Illustrator:

Arghya Manna is a comics artist, illustrator, and a Ph.D. dropout. He began his career as a doctoral student at Bose Institute, India. He had been working on Tumor Cell migration in a 3D environment. Along with this, he was an active participant in several projects related to tumor immunology and cancer stem cell. After leaving the lab without bagging the degree Arghya found refuge in art and got involved in drawing comics. He is an enthusiast in History of Science and has been running a blog named “Drawing History of Science”. Arghya wishes to engage the readers of history and science with the amalgamation of images and texts.