There is one thing for sure in life and that is death. Intelligent people try and stave off things like causing damage, injury or even death to others, but there are some scientists that have certainly had no regard for human or animal life. Sometimes it is necessary to use an animal in an experiment because you are trying to advance human life, but there are many experiments where animals and even humans are exposed to damage and death for reasons that are quite ridiculous. I remember headlines that broke about people that had LSD given to them, in government experiments years ago, who didn't know it. The idea was to see what would happen to them. This was disgraceful and showed an utter disregard for human life. What were these scientists and doctors thinking of? I don't know if it is true, but I head that one subject jumped out a window and killed himself. Another groups of experiments put dogs in a wind tunnel. They kept increasing the speed of the air flow until their eyelids were ripped off and they were permanently damaged and even died. What on earth could merit an experiment like this?

We know what the Germans and Japanese did in World War II to human beings. The Germans performed all sorts of unnecessary and horrible experiments on living beings. They felt that they could do this because the people they were experimenting on worthless, as far as they were concerned. People would be put out into the cold, while naked, to see how long it would take them to freeze to death, others would be put in chambers and gassed to see how long it would take to die. The Japanese cut people open for things like a sex class. These people were alive and they were cut without the benefit of anesthetic, they were called logs. When they wanted another human to cut open, they would say, "bring in another log". We were guilty in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, which only ended in the 1970s, of doing experiments on people without giving them proper information about what was going on. The scientists and doctors in the study actually withheld penicillin from some people so that the progress of the disease could be followed, this resulted in painful deaths for some.

Corn
Photo Source: EPS

Sometimes scientists just don't show common sense. I am not talking about all scientists here, but the select few that just didn't think things through before they conducted their experiments. Let us take the field of genetically modified crops. They spend years carefully working on modifying crops and are very careful in the lab, then what do they do? They plant a trial crop outside in the open air and this spreads some of the crop to other crops causing them to get their genes changed. Once this happens there is no way of reversing it. The wind and bees just do their thing. It doesn't take a rocket scientist or a geneticist for that matter, to figure out that once you expose a crop outside, it will spread its seeds or pollen. Right now there is a concern about disappearing honey bees. They are need for pollination of many of our food crops. Could it be that tampering with the genes in crops is responsible for this decrease in the honey bee population? How can supposedly intelligent people let something like this happen? Another example of faulty science was when in the early 1950s we exploded a nuclear weapon near our troops to see what effect this would have. Smart, real smart.

Sometimes you can't help but wonder if this Earth of ours will become a lifeless orb thanks to science. It might only take one big mistake for this to happen. How do we know that global warming was not caused by some experiment gone wrong? When I was a kid I used to think that scientists were the smartest people in the world. Now I can't help but think that for some of them, the toys have become to powerful. What I mean by this is that some of the stuff that they are experimenting with just have too big a consequence if something goes wrong. To be a good scientist you not only need intelligence, you also need common sense and a concern for others. The German and Japanese scientists that I talked about from World War II were criminals and murderers and the ones in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study were completely uncaring about human life. This is not what I am talking about now, I am talking about well meaning people who just have not thought things through.

In the beginning human testing was usually done by doctors and scientists on themselves. They started human testing around the 1700s, by testing things like vaccines. Some tested these vaccines on others without informing them of the dangers. One scientist that truly agonized over experimenting on humans was Louis Pasteur. He would only give his rabies treatment to a human after he was sure that his first subject, who died, would have died anyway.

Sometimes experiments are conducted entirely in secret. According to a news article by the BBC on 30 August, 2001, a secret experiment was conducted over parts of England to create rain. Apparently this worked too well since right after that Lynmouth was completely flooded and 35 people died. The article states that 90 million tons of water swept through the valley into Lynmouth on 15 August, 1952 and was so powerful that it swept buildings away or destroyed them. The tests had been conducted by the RAF. The article goes on to state that the classified documents relating to the experiments are now missing. Other areas also suffered. North Devon received 250 times the normal amount of rainfall and smell of sulphur was in the air.

Tending Bees
Photographer: ronnieb
Photo Source: MorgueFILE

African killer bees are a great example of an experiment gone wrong. A scientist got some African bees and brought them to Brazil. They were selected because of increased honey production and because they were placid. The reason for this was to increase the production of honey in the Brazilian bees by cross breeding. There was an accident and the bees escaped. Again the scientist went back to Africa for more bees. This time they were not as carefully selected and some very aggressive bees mated with the honey bees, creating the bee known as the "Killer Bee". They got out and you know the rest of the story, we have been receiving warnings ever since that the killer bees have been getting closer and closer to us.

A new Atom smasher is being built. It is under construction in Switzerland. A lot of you out there might say, "so what"? I only mention this because it will be the most powerful facility ever built. The name of it is the Large Hadron Collider. Again you say so what? It is true that we have built facilities like this before, but there is something about this one that makes it different, very different. It is so powerful that scientists claim it might produce tiny black holes that will last for only a tiny fraction of a second. In case you don't know what a black hole is, it is a collapsed object who's gravity is so strong that it pulls everything into it, even light. No one knows how much damage even a small one would do, if it was on Earth. Can you imagine if these scientists are wrong and a tiny black hole is formed, but doesn't dissipate? Would this miniscule black hole begin to suck everything around it in? Are we willing to take the word of a scientist who tells us there is nothing to worry about, the black holes will dissipate? If black holes are formed, scientists will be playing with the most powerful force in the universe. A nuclear bomb is absolutely nothing compared to the power of a black hole. If a tiny black hole began to suck in material from around it, would it grow in size? Could a tiny black hole eventually swallow the Earth? I don't know, but neither does anyone else. I can't see why we would even take the chance here, unless this is some sort of weapons development program? I certainly hope not.

I don't know what the answer is, but I do know, as I said before, that some experiments don't take into account human or animal lives and others are becoming more and more dangerous. When you are experimenting with our food chain or with forces that can destroy or severely damage the Earth, you HAVE to ask the questions, "Is this necessary and if it is, can it be sufficiently controlled and are all the safeguards in place?". I know that tremendous scientific advances might come from the new collider, but is it worth the risk? Just because someone tells you not to worry, does that mean he knows what he is talking about? If I wanted to list all the times that scientists were wrong, it would be quite a long list. Are we willing to risk the planet on the word of someone, on a subject that little is know about? I can only hope that the people involved will finally come to their senses.