Japan's Wartime Medical Atrocities: Comparative Inquiries in Science, History, and Ethics (Asia's Transformations (Paperback))

This is an academic and quasi-academic work with each chapter by a different individual researcher or writer. Many historically interesting facts are presented. Reading it, however, is a challenge because the varying bias of each author.The background language in each chapter clearly favors the cultural point of view of its writer. In some cases one feels that the writer expects his ideology to be believed and adopted by the reader. Even more egregious are chapters that explicitly try to equate historically accurate actions of the WWII Japanese Army human experimentation units to the post-war reaction of the United States, the Soviet Union and other countries to the official Japanese program of deliberate experiment to death on a large scale. In other words, some of the writers try to spread and share the blame for the Japanese atrocities before and during WWII among all the belligerents. This, of course, implies they favor more revenge (and compensation) be taken on the leadership and members of Japanese Army Units 731, 1855, 1644, 8604, 9420, the "Tama Unit" and indeed all other Japanese medical and pharmaceutical organizations, and the 10,000 and more personnel in the Ishii network, right up to the Emperor himself and the heads of past and current Japanese governments.Thus, some chapters verge on propaganda, while others actually achieve it. Balanced presentations seem not to be a priority.It is far less often that a chapter writer describes or even mentions the extensive efforts by staff of those Japanese Army units to destroy evidence of their misdeeds, or relate the Japanese government's cartoon like efforts to suppress this sad history from public knowledge or in some cases even openly attempt to obliterate the dastardly inhuman behavior of their citizens and military. Thus, the overall work reads as apologetic literature extensively qualified by an innate drive to portion out blame on all countries that did not earn it. Of course, this approach underestimates the impact each time a new mass grave, archive or artifact comes to light. (There are, of course, lots of these out there!) Given the impressive improvements in forensic sciences, it is likely much more material will be found. The question is whether it will make the news and how it will be spun.Curiously, there is effectively no mention of the Declaration of Helsinki in this book. The Declaration (Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects) codifies the ethical process for human experimentation in the development of medical therapies, and was first adopted by the World Medical Association in 1964, with seven amendments, most recently in 2013. It's philosophy is focused on responsibility of the medical community for the health and welfare of persons who participate in clinical trials, and was a direct reaction to the atrocities described in this book, both in Japan and Germany during WWII. Every person alive today benefits from this duty.Therefore, this book must be read with great care and reflection on the point of view of the individual chapter authors. Nevertheless, each page resonates on how difficult such tragedies are to forgive, while never forgetting them.