The Nazis did similar stuff (though AFAIK not quite at the same scale), and it was equally worthless.
I refer you to my previous comment: https://mander.xyz/comment/24962314
You would be interested as well I guess to hear about John Rabe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rabe
Another Nazi who actually appealed to Hitler to stop a Japanese genocide on the Chinese.
Dang.
Explanation: Unit 731 was a grotesque ‘research’ unit of the Japanese Empire in WW2, whose experiments were… incredibly brutal, unethical, and illegal by international law, murdering tens or even hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians in the process. Don’t look up example descriptions of their experiments unless you have a strong stomach.
After WW2, MacArthur, the American general in charge of occupying surrendered Japan, ended up offering the doctors of Unit 731 immunity in exchange for their cooperation in recovering the data of their experiments. The thinking being that SURELY Japan, in causing so many deaths and investing so many resources into a research division during a time of desperate and total war, must have some incredible results from their wartime super-science program to justify its existence!
… turns out, no, not only were most of the experiments fucking worthless, but the remainder that had any hypothesis with actual medical relevance were often done with shoddy methodology and record-keeping; and the one or two that may have had a greater-than-zero level of research professionalism have been largely rejected by the post-war scientific community for ethical concerns of using data extracted from a fucking torture unit.
So good going. Immunity in exchange for fuck-all.
You didn’t mention the best deterrent for curiosity. When a representative of the Nazi regime went there to learn what their allies were doing, he was horrified. The letter he wrote found no redeeming qualities whatsoever in the unit.
You know you’re evil when a literal Nazi gets surprised by how evil you are.
I should have listened to you.
Seriously though, don’t look it up.
You will find no comfort in knowing. It will just make you feel sick.
There was no value in what they did except sadism and brutal torture beyond words.
Though if you think nazis are pretty cool, go look it up right now. It’s what you’re supporting, and also what’s going to happen to you too eventually if fascism takes over
Yeah the tests were largely shit like:
seriously this is the light shit.
“how much blood can we replace with antifreeze before someone dies?”
There isn’t anything useful there. There isn’t a real world application. This won’t save a life. Its just pointless torture.
jokes on you when
spoiler
They figure out that’s how you’re meant to do cryogenetics/make artic warfare supersoldiers
I read about the Nanjing Massacre a.k.a. the Rape of Nanjing.
I don’t need to learn any more of Imperial Japan’s brutal inhumanity.
My imagination is sufficient, and I’m trying to quiet it down. There is nothing there for me.
And even if we imagine that the “research” wasn’t just torture for the sake of torture, how much value could the results possibly have?
Yeah great we know precisely what happens when you do horrible gruesome things to someone who is awake and fully aware of it, this will be of great use in our quest to decrease suffering in the world! I sure am glad we didn’t waste our time doing research on how to cure depression!
