Our Long, Proud, History Of Butchering Men for Science

The popular story of Edward Jenner inventing the very first vaccine goes like this: Disturbed by the endless and staggering death-toll caused by smallpox, noble Edward sought a preventative. Hearing that milkmaids who contracted cowpox were somehow immune to the disease, he had an instant “eureka!” moment and he created the very first vaccine. Accolades soon followed – securing his place in science as The Father Of Immunology. You probably learned all about him and Louis Pasteur in school, and rightly so.

But far less known is his lab rat – a little boy called James Phipps, aged just eight. To test his vaccine theory, Edward deliberately sliced open the boy’s arm and infected the wound with ‘fluids’ from a cowpox blister specifically in order to make him sick. He then waited for it to pass, and did the exact same thing with powdered smallpox scabs.

And yes – I do mean actual smallpox. Edward infected a child with a deadly and horrific disease to validate what amounted to a rumour. This, quite bluntly, could have killed the boy if Jenner was wrong. But luckily for everyone – especially James – this highly unethical experiment succeeded. James was immune because smallpox and cowpox were similar enough that his immune system was ready. So more vaccines followed, and Edward’s contempt for basic morality was neatly brushed under the carpet of history. You won’t find anyone asking if James had any say in the matter whatsoever (hint: he did not). Or why Edward didn’t stick himself if he was so sure it would work (hint: he wasn’t).

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But Did You Notice?

Edward’s go-to underage lab rat wasn’t a little girl. He didn’t even use a grown man or, heavens help us, a woman. No. He used a boy of far lower social standing than him. The son of his gardener, in fact. And – as you might have guessed – this pattern is one you will see stamped all across the history of science and medicine. The first blood-transfusion experiment was performed on to a young boy aged fifteen, and we don’t even know his name. They bled him nearly to death – for his health. you understand. Then they used a tube to connect his vein to that of a sheep – giving him a dose of its blood. That they had a sheep and the experimental device on hand says a lot about that accidental blood-loss. And, again, this could very well have killed the boy if they were wrong – which they were. Animal blood injected into your veins is a particularly painful way to die. The immune system sees it as a threat, and goes ballistic.

Thankfully, our boy survived what was likely an incredibly unpleasant reaction. As did their next lab-rat – a man. But on the third and fourth attempts, the recipients died. Rumour has it the third died of arsenic – however that’s unclear, and unlikely. It’s also besides the point. Even by the sixth try, not one of the people receiving animal blood happened to be female. Even by the time of the inevitable ban on freaky transfusion experiments, there does not seem to have been a single female test subject.

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Weird Coincidence…. Right?

Not a chance. Not even close. I want to be very clear here – we aren’t being selective with our examples. Even today, the vast majority of medical test subjects are male. Even in animal tests they prefer to use only male rats, but it’s also the same in human trials. Want to stick 30cc of ‘this blue stuff’ in a human to see what it does? Tradition says you stick it in a man, and up the dose until fun things happen or he dies.

And it makes a kind of twisted sense, doesn’t it? A tissue sample can only tell you so much, and testing it on a rat doesn’t mean it’s safe for non-rats. When doctors trial a drug on humans, the effects (and even the dose) are a blind guess. You are basically rounding up a small group of people who need money, and hoping for the best. And that leads to deaths. So who are some humans we don’t care about? Preferably young, healthy, and disposable….

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And It Doesn’t Matter A Whole Lot If They Consent

You may have heard of the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study, where a huge number of black men (and only black men) were tricked into thinking they were receiving free medical care. In actual fact, government scientists just wanted to watch men slowly die of Syphilis for forty years. That includes a twenty-five year period where Syphilis had a widely available and well known cure – penicillin. A cure they not only didn’t administer, but actively tried to block the men from getting. Including when 250 of them were drafted to die in WW2, and the draft office demanded they be cured first. As one ‘researcher’ put it “So far, we are keeping the known positive patients from getting treatment.” In other words, the only treatment these men received was contempt. It’s a familiar story, and it was repeated on male Guatemalan prisoners without their consent – a huge number of whom were deliberately infected. Many of them likely died, or suffered lasting health problems.

But, notice, again, that this is all focused on men.

Racism chose the race – and sexism narrowed that down to males. Which is to say, the gender that humans are scientifically proven to care less about. It’s horrific – but their suffering, at least, allows us to confirm the profile of the preferred victim: A captive male of low social-status and perceived worth – preferably of a hated race or tribe – who is ignorant of what you are doing to him. Hence why prisons – which are mostly male – are a favourite way to create captive testing labs. The question of making that official is often being raised, and it won’t go away until prisons do.

Oh – and it gets worse, by the way.

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Welcome To The Nuclear Guinea-Pig Club

Aside from the dropping of Fat Man and Little Boy on Japan, live nuclear tests have historically been performed on men. And, no, we don’t mean Indiana Jones – but we are talking about that period. It would be very easy to spend the rest of this article talking about nothing but the rescue workers at Chernobyl, where an experiment killed upward of a hundred men. Including, even, a man who just took a single photo of “The Elephant’s foot” – which was enough to kill him all on its own. We could also talk about the very aptly named ‘Demon Core’ experiments – where male scientists largely killed themselves and each-other though sheer stupidity. However, that would not get to the root of the problem. Those were simply accidents, even if the people sent to mop it up – and suffer the consequences – were all male.

No. The root of the issue lies in cold, calculated, malice. It lies in America, and France, and multiple other governments that tested nuclear weapons on their Troops – even detonating them directly overhead. It lies in the idea that men who aren’t old enough to drink can be lined up in just their boxers and subjected to cancer without their knowledge or consent. It lies in governments testing cocktails of drugs, poisons, and nerve-toxins on troops. And in German authorities okaying the mass-rape of young boys by KNOWN paedophiles in a sick thirty-year ‘experiment’ that resulted in torture, abuse, and murder. It lies, directly, in the idea that men are entirely disposable assets and that they may be used as such. And discarded.

But Male Privilege, amiright?

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This Isn’t Just A Historical Problem

Let me make this real for you by bringing it forward in time – smack out of the past, and right into your lap. Here are just three infamous examples from recent times:

• Mood Disorder medication – France, 2016. Result: Five men in hospital, and one dead after the drug directly attacked their brains. Probable life-long mental disability for the survivors. According to the hospital’s lead neurology expert, they have been inflicted with a “handicap that could be irreversible”. Conclusion: The affected men were given the highest dose, and that seems to play a major part in drug trial accidents.
• The so-called ‘Elephant Man’ Drug Scandal – UK, 2006. Result: Six men testing a treatment for arthritis and leukaemia suffered massive multiple organ failure, and swelling of the head. At least one lost all of his fingertips and toes. All had to be kept in intensive care, and several are now disabled. High possibility of future cancer and early death. Conclusion: Papers say the US company running the tests may have gotten the dose wrong. Read more here.
• Anti-psychopathy drug trial in the USA, circa 2004. Result: A disabled man stabbed himself to death. Conclusion: While it is difficult to link suicide directly to a specific medication, the company running the trial was heavily criticised for taking advantage of a mentally ill man for profit.
• Human Gene Therapy trial – USA, 1999. Result: Jesse Gelsinger, aged just 18, was injected with an experimental ‘vector’ designed to re-write his DNA. He died a few horrifyingly painful days later of multiple organ failure. Conclusion: The boy was included in the trial despite warnings that he was unsuitable due to the high ammonia levels in his blood. This is an object demonstration of why you need to be careful with drugs – especially experimental ones. The smallest thing can turn a cure into poison.

By the way, we didn’t cherry-pick those examples to get an all-male list. We just summarised an article from The Independent, then added one more. We could have made this a far longer list if we hadn’t. Sadly, our researchers could not find worldwide stats on drug trial fatalities, gendered or otherwise. However – between 2010-14, Drug Trial accidents in the UK alone resulted in 761 fatalities within just five years, and 197 cases of serious disability. There were 5136 hospitalisations, and a further 1818 “medically significant” problems. Those figures likely include brain damage, loss of limbs, lifelong illness, and so on. It’s very likely that the vast majority of the 7187 total incidents were men.

And this is for just a single, small, country – imagine the worldwide stats.

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However, There Is A Partial Solution

Feminism! Okay, we’re kinda joking – but we’re kinda serious too. You see, these brave souls – who valiantly fight against equal rape laws for men – have noticed that drugs aren’t being properly tested on female biology. And, of course, as, per usual – they are trying to frame this as sexism against women. As with everything else, our history of using men as expendable lab-rats is being reframed as hatred of women. I’m absolutely not joking. They’re genuinely terrible people.

But, in their own way, they have something roughly adjacent to a point. Drugs intended purely for female use are being safety-tested on mostly men – which has real side effects for women. Literally. Female biology is different to male biology – and that can screw up dosages, effectiveness, reactions, after-effects, duration, and more. Male and female biology is different – and not including women in your tests is a problem when drugs are marketed to women. You can’t just go: male rats, male humans, then jump to women without causing problems. Yes, even with things as simple as Tylenol. With this in mind, things like The Thalidomide Scandal make a lot more sense. If your go-to rat is men, then that creates problems for everyone.

However, we can use their blinkered nature to fix the MRA side of this problem. Feminists have the clout to equalise testing, and they are already doing it – so why not encourage them? Why not tell your female friends that you’re REALLY seriously concerned that a world of medicine designed for men might be killing them? After all, there is a real issue here – which is to say, a woman’s issue! To that end, we call on all our MRA friends to take this deeply feminist issue to heart! Put on your ironic pussy-hat, gargle that blue-pill (try not to swallow it), and raise your corporate-sponsored placard to the heavens! It’s time to fight for girl power!

And if, along the way, we somehow manage to solve a problem that mainly effects men… why, that’s just an unintended side-effect your doctor didn’t warn you about.

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