In this blog post, we will look at whether animal testing is ethical and whether we are missing out on any issues between money and human dignity.
Maruta is a Japanese word that means a peeled log, but it reminds us of cruel human experiments. During World War II, Japan established a special unit called the “731 Unit.” This unit was notorious for human experimentation that was more like torture than military work. For about 10 years from 1936, the 731 Unit conducted experiments on bacteria, freezing, and poison gas on prisoners from neighboring countries such as Korea, China, and Russia. About 3,000 innocent lives were sacrificed in the course of the heinous experiments, which included freezing and breaking the hands of living people and performing dissections on living people without anesthesia. Japan could not avoid condemnation from countries around the world, including the victim countries, and the human experiments of the 731 Unit are considered to be a criminal act that arose from the desperate circumstances of wartime and should never be allowed in modern society.
However, experiments on humans are still being conducted even in our vicinity. A typical example is the bioequivalence test, or bioavailability test. This test is conducted to determine whether the bioavailability of a drug is the same as that of an existing drug by administering the same drug as the one currently on the market to a third party, i.e., the test subject. It is a form of participation in various tests after taking medicine, and is known as “Maruta Part-Time Job” among young people. It is mainly participated in by men aged 19 to 30 who are in good physical condition, and although there is a possibility of side effects, there are more applicants than there are available spots. There are even several sites that specialize in recruiting subjects for drug efficacy tests.
Of course, the toxicity test is conducted legally. In order for the toxicity test not to become a 731 Unit’s human guinea pig experiment, it must comply with the Nuremberg Code, a representative medical ethics code. The Nuremberg Code specifies ten basic principles that should be followed to reflect the moral, ethical, and legal concepts of medical experiments. The most important principle is the voluntary consent of the subject. The relevant parties must have the legal capacity to decide whether to consent and must be able to make an informed decision. The subject must be informed of the nature, duration and purpose of the experiment, the methods and means of the experiment, all anticipated inconveniences and risks, and any health or personal effects that may result from participating in the experiment. All of these obligations mean that the test subject and the experiment planner are in equal positions, and the experiment planner cannot force the test subject to participate in the experiment.
These standards and principles are taken for granted in modern ethical standards, but in actual toxicity testing, the relationship between the test subject and the experiment planner is not strictly equal. A survey of 1,531 male and female college students conducted by a part-time job brokerage site showed that 58.3% of men and 40.6% of women said they would be willing to work as a maruta part-time job if they were paid a lot of money, with an average of 48.3%. The money was the transaction condition between the test subjects and the experiment planner. The test subject participates in the experiment for financial gain, and the experimenter acts as the employer who pays the money. Within the trap of money, the experimenter and the test subject can transform into the boss and the employee at any time.
However, this is not an argument to exclude the financial element from experiments on humans. As much as human dignity is important, the test subject should be properly compensated for participating in the experiment, and money is the most objective criterion for this. Rather, what is needed to solve these problems is for the experiment planner to clearly understand the relationship with the test subject and to be aware of the possibility of problems arising. The experiment planner should be aware that the use of money as a tool in human experimentation in modern society has the potential to harm human dignity. The right ethics of the experimenter serves as a shield that makes the subject realize his or her dignity and ensures that experiments on precious life are conducted only for the common good. If the law is there to protect what we believe is right, then ethical consciousness can be protected through introspection.
Such claims may seem somewhat distant in times of peace. However, a proper ethical view of human dignity serves as an important safety device that maintains a minimum level of humanity in times of crisis. In interviews with Japanese members of the 731 Unit after the war, they replied that they did not think the brutal human experiments at the time were cruel at all. For them, using prisoners for military purposes was just their job. Their ethics were distorted in wartime, and the tragic incident left human dignity severely damaged.
Let us recall a line from the poem “Maruta Alba” by the Korean poet Lee Wol-ran:
In a dead end, the only card left is a body as smooth as a test tube
We will become the 731 Unit’s human guinea pigs.
In front of the white-coat war criminals who have been authorized,
the foul blood that is being inherited is being recorded in a noble chart.
In order for us not to become the white-coat war criminals who have been authorized, we must always remember that we are dignified human beings.
