Good From Evil?

Should science use knowledge gained from criminal experiments on human beings? No, said Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Thomas, who last week forbade use of Nazi data in an EPA report. Forty concentration-camp inmates had been exposed to poison phosgene gas to examine its effects. The information was included in a draft study for the EPA, since the gas is now used in making plastics and pesticides. But 22 agency officials and scientists expressed concern. Some of them argued, "To use such data debases us all ((and)) gives such experiments legitimacy." Thomas agreed.

So does Daniel Callahan, director of the Hastings Center research organization in New York. "Even if it will save lives," he says, "I think it's wrong." Applying the research, "would put us back into exactly the kind of reasoning that led to the abuses in the first place." But Yale Medical Professor Robert Levine worries about such rigid restriction. Says he: "To put people at risk today -- such as those living around toxic plants -- without making use of credible scientific data is intolerable too."