Synopses & Reviews
Science, as Andrew Goliszek proves in this compendious, chilling, and eye-opening book, has always had its dark side. Behind the bright promise of life-saving vaccines and life-enhancing technologies lies the true cost of the efforts to develop them. Knowledge has a price; often that price has been human suffering. The ethical limits governing use of the human body in experimentation have been breached, redefined, and breached again---from the moment the first plague-ridden corpse was heaved over the fortifications of a besieged medieval city to the use of cutting-edge gene therapy today.
Those limits are in constant need of redefinition, for the goals and the techniques have become both more refined and more secretive. The German and Japanese human experiments of the 1930s and 1940s horrified the world when they came to light. These barbaric exercises in pseudoscience grew out of assumptions of racial superiority. The subjects were deemed subhuman; ordinary guidelines could therefore be suspended. What has happened in the decades since World War II has differed only in degree. Explicitly or implicitly, any organization or government that undertakes or sponsors scientific research applies some measure of human worth. Experimentation rests upon an equation that balances suffering against gain, the good of the collective against the rights of the individual, and the risk of unknown consequences against the rewards of scientific discovery.
Everything depends upon who makes that equation. The sobering and gripping accumulation of evidence in this book proves exactly what has been justified in the name of science. The science of "eugenics" justified enforced sterilization. The need to gain an upper hand in the Cold War justified CIA experiments involving mind control and drugs. The desperate race to control nuclear proliferation was used to justify radiation experiments whose effects are still being felt today. Chemical warfare, gene therapy, molecular medicine: These subjects dominate headlines and even direct our government's foreign policy, yet the whole truth about the experimentation behind them has never been made public.
Though not a cheering book, In the Name of Science is a crucially important one, and it deserves a wide audience. A biologist by training, Goliszek presents each topic clearly and explains fully its significance and implications. Connecting the history of scientific experimentation through time with the topics that are likely to dominate the future, he has performed an invaluable service. No other book on the market provides the research included here, or presents it with such persuasive force.
Review
"Though this will hold a reader's attention and does present some new information, it is more broad than deep and offers no real explanations or solutions." Library Journal
Review
"High-minded, full of righteous indignation and now-it-can-be-told breathiness, this tract trades in half-baked conspiracy theories." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"[Goliszek] skips from scientific disgrace to scientific disgrace with the glee of a freak-show emcee, punctuating his discoveries with satirical asides and a barrage of exclamation marks....Goliszek's theatrics notwithstanding, In the Name of Science does provide a useful map to the low points in the history of science, a map whose landmarks ought to be better remembered by scientists and by a culture that dotes on science." Farhad Manjoo, Salon.com (read the entire Salon.com review)
Synopsis
As Goliszek demonstrates in this chilling book, science has been called upon to kill people as often as it has to cure them. The grim catalogue of inhumanities committed culminated with the Nazi experiments, but in recent history the U.S. government has sponsored experiments on human subjects without their full knowledge.
Synopsis
Since the days when armies would catapault plague-ridden corpses over the ramparts of besieged cities, nearly anything has been deemed fair in the quest for domination. As Andrew Goliszek demonstrates in this chilling and compendious book, science has been called upon to kill people as often as it has to cure them. The grim catalogue of inhumanities committed in the name of science culminated with the gruesome Nazi experiments, but in very recent history our own government has sponsored experiments on human subjects without their full knowledge. And what lies ahead, as our lives our very DNA become accessible to those who maintain they are pursuing scientific knowledge for its own sake? While other books have documented some aspect of this critical and disturbing subject involving such topics as biological warfare, ethnic cleansing, genetic engineering, and drug experimentation In the Name of Science is the first to give readers the whole picture, connecting the long history of scientific experimentation on humans to the very real threats we face today.
Synopsis
Do you know what has been done in the name of science?
In the Name of Science contains recently declassified information about voluntary and involuntary human experimentation done in the United States and throughout the world over the past fifty years---and shows us what may lie ahead.
--Documents top-secret research involving chemical and biological weapons, often tested over civilian populations
--Illuminates human radiation experiments, shedding new light on one of the most shocking uses of human subjects in modern history.
--Reveals the CIA's extensive program in mind control and behavior modification, using never-before-published testimonials by individuals involved.
--Uncovers efforts by unscrupulous researchers and physicians to test dangerous procedures and useless drugs on human subjects in order to promote products, boost company stock prices, and secure research grants.
--Describes the origins and sinister history of eugenics programs and offers evidence of present day eugenics programs designed specifically to control global populations.
--Exposes a secret agenda by which the United States and European governments might exploit international treaties to control the global pharmaceutical and health care industry and criminalize the use of nutrition supplements.
--Documents how rapid advances in genetic engineering and molecular biology are leading us toward the creation of ethnic weapons.
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. 407-432) and index.
About the Author
During the past decade
Andrew Goliszek has received several biomedical research grants and NIH-sponsored research projects in stress physiology. The author of two books of science fiction, he teaches biology, human physiology, and endocrinology at North Carolina A&T State University and lives in the Piedmont region with his wife and son.
Table of Contents
The chemical revolution : bringing bad things to life -- Nature's weapons : man and biological warfare -- The eugenics movement : past, present, and future -- Human radiation experiments -- The CIA and human experiments -- Silent conspirators : the government-industry connection, from aspartame to AZT -- Organized medicine : a century of human experimentation -- Ethnic weapons : the new genetic warfare -- What the future holds : human experimentation in the twenty-first century.