Experimental medicine has become an everyday occurrence in today's world, from cloning to finding a cure for AIDS. Most people see the news reports about medical experiments that have no problems with the testing of a new drug, but what about the experiments on drugs that turn out bad? Unless people research all of the experiments that have been done people will not know about the mishaps that happen in testing. One example of this is of a two-year-old girl who was diagnosed with bladder cancer. The doctors knew a surgical cure, but convinced the parents to use experimental medicine instead, and because of this treatment the girl died. The reports had no record of the medicine that was used on the girl because this treatment was so new (Weed, 1). Doctors do not release stories like this for the public to read about, but they will talk about all of the good experiments. Why is this? Since the doctors do not want to scare their patients, they do not release a story like this two-year-old girl into the public if possible. President Bill Clinton said in the Washington Monthly that, "Science must respect the dignity of every American. We must never allow our citizens to be unwitting guinea pigs in scientific experiments." This is the same man who used our tax dollars for experimenting on the corpses of unborn children. His actions contradict his words (qtd. Shaw, 2). To "respect the dignity of Americans" we must not perform experiments on people unwillingly, even if it is an unborn baby. The story of Mary Jeanne Connell is a good example of a person's dignity and rights being violated.
In October 1946, Mary Jeanne Connell became one of the many statistics of experimental medicine. She was twenty-five years old at the time that she went for treatment for her anemia and low weight. She recalled a nurse who asked her, "Would you like to help humanity?" She just laughed and said, "No thanks," but little did she know that she had no choice.
