re: #742 Sergey Romanov

Allowing the research in what sense?

Well, I was thinking of citations to their papers, but I’m not sure they actually published. You’d know better than I.

I’m not convinced a case can be made that using the already done research by dead monsters will inspire “normal” people/states to do the same.

Well; medical ethics have progressed hugely since the Enlightenment. I don’t think that it takes a monster to do terrible experiments, just someone who’s good at compartmentalization. Leaving men with syphilis intentionally untreated to examine what happens to them is cruel, but we leave people with diseases untreated all the time and call it economics.

I think people take inspiration from the culture that surrounds them, and if we were in a culture where it was no big deal to talk excitedly about the discoveries made by the Nazis, that’d make it more likely for ethical breaches to be allowed. I think the answer is aggressive enforcement of medical ethics, though, rather than disallowing the research.

And the new monsters will do it regardless of any ethical confines.

True. I’m more worried about the Overton window of it, to borrow the political metaphor.