Been there, done that, wasn't acceptable

Paul Greenberg: A modest proposal takes a look at how some people these days seem to be going down paths that led to no good before. He starts with Arlen Specter's justification for subsidizing stem cell research on human embryos, and goes from there.

...Remember the various experiments the Japanese performed on prisoners of war during the 1940s? These subjects were going to be worked to death anyway, so why not put them to some scientific use? Back then we could see through such rationalizations. Not even the records of those experiments would be used.

[snip]

All seemed to understand what didn't have to be said back then: This research was . . . unclean. To touch it would be to defile oneself, and risk infection by the same ethical absence that motivated the experiments in the first place.

There is no scientific explanation for such a feeling; it is just there. Call it the wisdom of repugnance...

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