Narahari 1

Sravya Narahari
Mrs. Henry
ELA/Reading 3/5
9 September 2016
Decisions, Decision
Desperate people every day participate in medical experiments that are risky, danger, and
Medical experiments on humans have multiple harmful side effects that could lead to death of
test subjects. Therefore, it is unethical to use humans for medical experiments. Although some
argue that worldwide diseases can be cured with successful results, exposing individual human
subjects to risk for the sake of advancement of science is unnecessary. As a matter of fact,
depression might occur when human experiments expect positive impacts, and the results do not
reach their expectation. In Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, Charlie faces depression. I
dont know where the week wentI think I stayed in bed all week (Keyes 82). Not wanting
to get out of bed, avoiding communication, and lacking motivation are signs of depression.
Depression is hugely harmful to the human body and mind. Also deteriorating and regressing
quickly after the experiment is a great probability since there are no guarantees in medical
experiments. Now my mind is deteriorating rapidly (Keyes 81). There are no guarantees that
the experiments are going to succeed. It is unethical to perform experiments on humans when the
results might not be permanent because the effects may leave the participant further impaired
than prior to the experiment. In addition, researchers can take advantage of the participants by
focusing more on the research than the participants well-being. In the article, Human

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Experiments: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly by Anthony Wrigley, abuse in human
experiments is brought to light. Abuse can also happen because researchers themselves may
favor the interests of carrying out research over the interest of the subject involved in the
research (Wrigley 1). The subjects can be put in a harmful situation when they are exposed to
unnecessary risks. Ultimately, using humans for medical experiments is unethical because there
are multiple side effects such as depression, no guarantees of success and abuse of subject.
Knowing the disadvantages of medical experiments on humans is important to our society, so
there are no unsafe situations in the future.

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Works Cited
Wrigley, Anthony Senior Lecturer in Ethics, Keele University. "Human Experiments the Good,
the Bad, and the Ugly." The Conversation. N.p., 08 June 2015. Web. 19 Sept.
2016.
Keyes, Daniel. Flowers for Algernon. Common Core Literature, Pearson Education, 2015, pp.
53-86