Pain, Pleasure, and the Greater Good. From the Panopticon to the Skinner Box and Beyond

Abstract

"How should we weigh the costs and benefits of scientific research on humans? Is it right that a small group of people should suffer in order that a larger number can live better, healthier lives? Or is an individual truly sovereign, unable to be plotted as part of such a calculation? These questions have long bedeviled scientists, doctors, and citizens. In Pain, Pleasure, and the Greater Good, Cathy Gere presents the gripping story of how we have addressed them over time. Today, we are horrified at the idea that a medical experiment could be performed on someone without consent. But for more than two centuries, the doctrine of the greater good held sway. If a researcher believed his work would benefit humanity, then inflicting pain, or even death, on unwitting or captive subjects was considered ethically acceptable. It was only in the wake of World War II, and the revelations of Nazi medical atrocities, that public and medical opinion began to change, culminating in the National Research Act of 1974, which mandated informed consent. Yet Gere cautions that that greater good thinking is on the upswing again today and that the lesson of history is in imminent danger of being lost."--Jacket. Introduction: diving into the wreck -- Trial of the archangels -- Epicurus at the scaffold -- Nasty, British, and short -- The monkey in the Panopticon -- In which we wonder who is crazy -- Epicurus unchained -- Afterword: the restoration of the monarchy.