Thursday, September 3, 2015

For The Greater Good

In Escape From Spiderhead,  Jeff, the protagonist, is a lab rat in a prison posing as a scientific research center. Everyday he participates in experiments for the greater good of humanity. He is given chemicals that affect how he thinks, speaks and acts.

What better subjects for experiments to advance the human race than a human?
But wait. Is this ethical? Isn't this one of the things that the Nazis did in their concentration camps?

Of course it is ethical and not at all like the Nazis.  What Jeff did was completely voluntary as compared to the Nazi experiments. If he didn't want the drip on, he simply didn't have to say "Acknowledge."

Or was it voluntary? What choice did Jeff really have? If he did not say "Acknowledge" when they asked to turn on his drip of the chemical being tested, then they would just give him Docilryde to make him happy to comply.

But he was there for murder! It's not just like he was some random person they found off the street and captured -- like the Jews in the concentration camps. Murder is an unspeakable act of violence that deserves to be punished.

And yet, when one of Spiderhead's subjects died under experimentation, no one seemed to care.  Except for Jeff, the murderer, who was willing to die before seeing another person killed.


2 comments:

  1. Love it. Would have never thought to connect it to the Nazi experimentation. I liked that you were able to find similarities but that you continued to state very explicitly how they were different (it's hard to compare anything to such a horrific event in history).

    ReplyDelete
  2. Love it. Would have never thought to connect it to the Nazi experimentation. I liked that you were able to find similarities but that you continued to state very explicitly how they were different (it's hard to compare anything to such a horrific event in history).

    ReplyDelete