Introduction:

          In the Maze Runner series, human experimentation is the main idea. Creating mazes, serums, and deadly creatures are just a few of many parts of the terrible and unethical psychological experiments. The first book in the series, the Maze Runner, it isn’t clear why W.I.C.K.E.D is experimenting with humans in such brutal ways but there are many deaths and suffering during the survivors in the Glade and it demoralizes all of them.

 

          Experiments on humans is very common but there are some criticism and ethics involved with human experiments. Today, most experiments containing humans have to be regulated and approved but that was not always the case.

 

          To do such experiments like the ones in the Maze Runner, you need to have a completely valid reason why. There is a struggle between the Gladers and W.I.C.K.E.D along with the rest of the population about the experiments. Some might agree and others might not but it raises a big question. Should we sacrifice and basically put people who are immune to the flare through terrible torture to try and get a theoretical cure for the deadly Flare virus that has killed a few billion people, or should we just not conduct the experiments.

 

          Learning about human experimentation and the ethics of them is important to understanding the decisions of W.I.C.K.E.D in the Maze Runner series and what everybody has to go through. Sometimes human experimentation is necessary

 

Ethics of Human Experimentation:

 

          Science is extremely important in modern times and it is essential to conduct experiments to find out certain information. Humans are used in many experiments and there are many that have been conducted in places like Harvard University. Most experiments involving humans are psychological but there are some that involve other areas of science. (Summers)

 

          Many people have criticized human experimentation and questioned if the experiment is ethical or not. They have wondered if the experiment is truly necessary and if the results would greatly help the world. A question such as “is medical and scientific progress, though beneficial to mankind, to be valued more highly than human rights and the individual, or vice versa is a common thing somebody would consider before making a human experiment. Experimenters need to know how much they are going to tell their subjects in the experiment and if they will be harmed in any way. ("Health")

 

          The 20th century had the worst unethical experiments which badly damaging human subjects. In one experiment experiment, dangerous hallucinogens were used and at the State University of New York, a professor was sued because he was electrically shocking students in an experiment of his. The Nazi experiments were one of the worst and they were more like torture, not experiments to gain benefiting outcomes. (Summers)

 

          To regulate human experimentation, organizations like the Science Standing Committee (SSC) and the FDA were created. To even do a human experiment, you would have to send a form into the SSC to get approved legally. If an experiment involves a human consuming toxic substances and illegal drugs, then it is most likely going to be rejected. Sometimes the test subjects aren’t told certain things about the experiment and the SSC needs to know how much information the subject can be told for them to give full consent to participating in the experiment. ("Health")

 

Main Types of Psychological Human Experiments:

 

          There are different types of psychological human experiments. Obedience to authority is when people follow orders from someone who has higher authority. Those orders might be terrible stuff yet a lot of people would do it if a higher ranking person ordered them too. Conformity is a type of psychological experiment that tests if people’s opinions are affected by other people. There was an experiment where a group of 5 were asked a simple question but 4 people which were in on the experiment purposely chose a wrong answer and the person being tested on chose the wrong answer too. Observational role learning focuses on how people learn to do certain things by trying and failing. Cognitive dissonance explains that looks at ways people evaluate themselves on something they have accomplished. (Blakstad)

 

          The helping behavior or good samaritan experiment tests how long it takes for a crowd of people to help somebody who needs help out in public. The experiment tests out the Bystander Effect. The Bystander Effect is a phenomenon that says people don’t help anybody when there is a lot of other people around them. When a bystander actually does anything then it is very likely that other people help too. Another effect is the Halo Effect. The Halo Effect makes people believe famous celebrities show positive traits like intelligence, friendliness and good judgement because they are physically attractive and well known. The Chameleon Effect might seem very strange to people but it is a real thing. The Chameleon Effect happens when 2 or more people who know each other well use similar locutions, look similar, copy each other’s preferences and so on. It is known as the Chameleon Effect because a Chameleon copies its surroundings and tries to blend in. (Blakstad)

 

Some of the Worst Human Experiments Ever:

 

          There are a lot of cruel experiments that have been done in the past that could bring nearly any modern scientist or doctor to tears. The U.S might seem like a country that wouldn’t commit such atrocities but back in World War 2, the U.S Navy was testing the effectiveness of their protective gear and gas masks on live subjects. The gas used was the deadly mustard gas which burned its victims and caused large severe blisters on the skin and lungs. The test subjects were never informed on what was going on and worst of all, their injuries were completely ignored by the Navy. Vanderbilt University in the U.S is also guilty of doing outrageous and dangerous experiments on people in the period after World War 2 and before the Cold War. Researchers gave 829 pregnant women “vitamin” drinks that contained a deadly radioactive isotope. The women were told it would help their baby which in reality, injured the babies and themselves. The researcher’s goal was to study how quickly radiation leaked into the placenta and uterus. The experiment caused many injuries and deaths. At least seven babies died from cancer and related disease. The women got rashes, hair and teeth loss, and cancer. ("The 30 Most Disturbing Human Experiments in History")

 

          One of the worst war crimes ever committed happened in Unit 731, a covert biological and chemical weapons research facility owned by the Japanese Army. Any person can be used in the experiment like POW’s, children, men, and women. Scientists and researchers would do terrible things like forcefully taking out organs from a conscious living body, cut off limbs of subjects to learn about blood loss, and inflicting subjects with bad infections and diseases.Surprisingly, a lot of the scientists who worked at Unit 731 got successful political, academic, business, and medicinal occupations. ("The 30 Most Disturbing Human Experiments in History")

 

          The Nazi doctors and scientists were known to do terrible things to the persecuted patients they experimented on. The Nazi experiments usually ended in death, disabilities, and mangled bodies. Genetically manipulating twins, transplanting bones, muscle tissue, and nerves were a few of the medical experiments done in the concentration camps. Exposure to harmful chemicals and diseases as a very common thing to do as well. After the discovery of their horrific war crimes, the Nuremberg Trials were created to bring justice to the Nazi war criminals. Soon after the Nuremberg Code of medical ethics was created to try to prevent any more medical tragedies from happening. ("The 30 Most Disturbing Human Experiments in History")

 

          North Korea, a place shrouded in mystery has had some terrible information leaked. There were many unethical experiments being conducted in North Korea. If you were a subject of a North Korean experiment, you would basically be put on death row. A black van called “the crow” would randomly take people from prison camps and transfer them to the experimentation facilities. Surgery was done on subjects without anesthetic, prisoners would be locked up in cages with no food, and huge rooms with toxic gas nozzles would murder entire families. In one experiment, 50 healthy women prisoners were forced to ingest cabbage leaves covered in a deadly poison. All of the women died in a few minutes. ("The 30 Most Disturbing Human Experiments in History")

 

          The Soviet Union tried to make many breakthroughs in chemical warfare but at the expense of some of its own people. The Soviets built many laboratories to create and test new types of deadly chemicals. The goal of the scientists who worked at the laboratories was to create an odorless, tasteless chemical that is extremely hard to detect. Mustard gas, ricin, digitoxin, and curare are some of the poisons used. When it came to testing, scientists told their subjects they would be receiving medication or they just snuck the poison in their meals. ("The 30 Most Disturbing Human Experiments in History")

 

Conclusion:

          By learning about human experimentation, regulations, types of human psychological experiments, and some of the worst experiments ever done, you can understand more of the Maze Runner characters like the Creators of the maze and what they have to go through. The book can tell us that sometimes humans have to be experimented on in ways that seem very cruel if it is for something that will greatly benefit the human race or even save it. There would be a lot of controversy and arguments because of ethical and legal reasons. Psychological damage can be permanent in some psychological experiments. The most terrible experiments involving humans in the past left many of its subjects injured or dead but they were just torture and didn’t have a lot of good outcome for the cost. Understanding human experimentation can help you understand a reason that the book was written, to create a devastated world where terrible human experimentation is acceptable and the rest of civilization has no other hope. In the end of the series however, all the experimenting was for nothing and their theoretical cure that wasn’t impossible but very hard to achieve wasn’t ever discovered. The test subjects had to go through so much pain for nothing.