Prisoners Should Be Used For Medical Experiments Without Consent

1. We are very sorry that the proposition didn’t realize that one of the most important burden of their proof is why government has the right, or why it is right for the government to act like The Authority to determine the death-row prisoner’s “usage”. As the propostion stated, and I quote:”This debate is not about whether or not it is right for the state to make this decision.” Maybe is just because this careless attitude the proposition thinks it’s ok for the government to do whatever they see fit to freely torture the death-row prisoners or give them excessive inhuman treatment. A very dangerous totalitarian mentality. We feel that the proposition is not on the same page talking about the issue here if they don’t realize the importance of justifying the legitamacy of their action. However, we would still argue against the principle they stated.
The proposition mentioned that the main purpose of the justice system is to protect the innocent. We’d agree it is one of the principle of justice but this function is not reflected nor enhanced under the proposition’s model. By putting criminals in prison, and by executing the death-row prisoners, the purposed of protecting innocent people in society is already achieved because the best way to protect is to keep them way from the public. This has nothing to do with conducting medical experiment to these prisoners. So the real reason the proposition saying here is that to reduce the expenditure of prison as it’s expensive to execute the death penalty. We can’t agree with this either. First of all, the proposition already stated that there are alternatives such as heavy labor for the retributive punishment to prisoners. In the case of death-row prisoners, their retributive punishment is, as we already stated in our arguments, the right of their life. Such a punishment fit for their crime. To impose anything more punishment will consist a cruel and unusual punishment, which we explain in our argument No. 4. The medical experiment is irrelevant to pay their “debt” to society

2. By giving just one example doesn’t show the whole picture of death-penalized prisoners. More importantly, this example only shows that he deserves capital punishment, but not showing any links why he deserves to treat as human guinea pig WITHOUT consent. Besides, it’s a hasty generalization to say that every death row prisoners are seriel killers just because Bundy was so. There are numerous other stories about how innocent people have been wrongly sentenced to death–for example, innocent North Carolina Man Levon “Bo” Jones Exonerated After 14 Years On Death Row. Since 1973, 135 death-row inmates have been wrongly convicted and exonerated. Jones is the most recent case in 2008. 7 people have been wrong executed despite of their innocence based on strong evidence. So what about the right for these innocent people? We have reason to believe that wrong conviction will continue to help as it did before because of the imperfectness of the justice system itself. Propositions model definitely includes these convincted but innocent people, as there is no immediate way to clear their name once the conviction is made. As the proposition is a big fan of rights of the innocent, it’s exactly self-contradictory because their plan hurts the right of those innocent. First they don’t have a debt to pay back at all; second, any medical experiment, especially for pandemic diseases, has potential risk or even damage to health. These people, once found unguilty will be ordered release and return to society for a normal life, there would already be physical harm made to their body let alone to say their rights been completely infringed.


3. It might be more expensive to execute a criminal then keep them in prison, but that’s the obligation goes with the decision of allowing death penalty. A more topical debate to release the financial restrain of the prison system might be to abolish the capital punishment so that we save tax-payer’s money by just having life-long imprisonment. Since the US government choose to allow death penalty, as one of the four developed democracies supporting this practice, it is a necessary spending in their annual budget plan to maintain the system, with or without the medical experiment issue. We should recognize that the 60 million dollars proposition mentioned for US to correct the system is not just for the whole prison system, why disproportionally aimed at the death-penalized prisoners to “repay the debt” ? Even if it stands, counting on the death-row prisoners to repay the budge by forcing them to be tested is not a way out of it. We appreciate the novelty, not the logic behind it. One misunderstanding of the Proporstion is to think that the 137 million dollars of tax payer’s money is spent for nothing. It should be mistaken that this money is citizen’s fee pay for the government’s role to provide society security, for the maintainance of the governments functional constituencies including police, prison, national defense etc. as elements in the big network of government services. Citizens are beneficiaries of a more secured society under the operation of a well-functioning government who knows how to use their taxpayer’s money and when or where to use it. The government should be the one that directly hold accountable for the taxpayer’s money, not the prisoners. The relation between prisoner and other citizens are not a “debt-and-pay” relationship as depicted by the propositon. By giving death penalty, the prisoners already paid their share of debt, directly linked to the crimes they committed and the innocent people they hurt in their certain case. By giving death penalty, they already receive the maximum amount punishment of retributive justice and no extra undue or unfair treatment should be imposed. Thirdly, if you wanna talk about finance for the justice system, the problem of US government is not that they don’t have money, but how did they spend it–how much does the Iraq war costed? Estimated 1.6 trillion by 2009. Probably the government should give more thought about medical experiments than mass destructive weapons. Spare those prisoners who already facing a death penalty.

Again, this does not prove why compulsory medical experiment suddenly has the solid reason to be performed. The way for the convicts to pay their “biggest debt” is the terminal of their life, as stated above, not other undue burdens.

http://www.aclu.org/capital/innocence/index.html

The opposition side today fully recognize the need for medical technology in modern world, and acknowledge the importance of vaccine research to encounter possible outbreak of pandemic disease. We share the compassion and sympathy to mankind for the burden of survival suffering they have been and will be carried on.

However, what we disgree, is the way government approach to the problem. Does the govenment have the right to target prisoners as mere objects of medical experiment? And particularly, does the government has the right to do so without any consent of the prisoners?

Is it for or against the rule and nature of justice modern society build upon? The oppostion side firmly says no. To aim the experiment on prisoners, and especially without any consent involved, is fundementally unjustified to the principle of justice, human rights and the role of a government. This isn’t a debate about medicine and vaccaine, but about justice and rights.

1) Against the prinicple of Rehabilitation

Basically, the proposition side today treat the prisoners as a group of lifeless hoog and thous who does not deserved any consideration as a human being.

They deny any of their rights and believes that they deserved nothing but to die and be treated like millions of dogs, rabbits, rats, monkeys died from medical experiments each year in the United States. In their case, there’s no distinction between prisoners and a mere lifeless object. We think such mentality and principle behind it, if there’s any, is fundementally unfounded and unconstitutional. We understand that these prisoners have committed vicious crime and should be given severe punishment (in the case of captical punishment which they already been given) and we also understand that they should be condemned morally because they violated the social contract and against the norms of citizenship, But first of all, capital punishment is still a controversial issue in terms for the degree of justice it could serve, and even if it’s justifiable as the case set in the United States, it does not give right to the government to punish the prisoners by additional means for medical uses. In other words, regardless of how much the prisoners should condemned morally, there’s no legal basis that the government could further punish the prisoners at will as convenient tools to suit for any purpose the government sees fit. It’s crucial for the proposition side to answer the question that where is this legislative mendate come from, when prisoners already sentenced to death, to further punish them as objects of nonconsensual medical experiement? Where do justice draw the line between appropriate punishment and abusive retributive revenge? The proposition is extreme vague on this issue and makes the plan arbitrary without any legal basis, nor the justification of it.


We as the opposition side believes that this twisted notion of justice proposed by the propostion would be a shame of modern society. Justice should served for its rehabilitation purpose, to provide prisoners, even deprived the right to life, a chance to remorse what they have done and feel truely regretful. Treating them as silent tools for experiment wouldn’t serve for this purpose. On the contrary, it will very likely to increase the antagonism between criminals and the society–because now that they are deprived everything, including right to life and right of informed consent. Deprived the right to life does not means that they are automatically deprived their right to treat their body. Now the government is not only taking their life away, but also infringe greatly their personal autonomy to free use any part of their body. This is beyond the legal punishment they deserve, but become bladent discrimination they do not necessarily derserve. A prisoner would less likely to remorse for what they did to break the rule of society and because more antagonize with the society because now they are treated unfairly in the “violence begets violence” circle. Justice could not achieve its purpose by this way.

The harm of violation of this principle is not only directly linked to prisoners as individuals, that they are not given their lawful protection or being maltreated, but also linked to the whole society–that this will turn the society into a ZERO torlerance society with no room of restoritive justice. Why? Because the policy is sending a strong message that it’s not only legal but also moral to infringe prisoner’s right, that it’s ok and right to treat them as guinea pigs for medical experiements, that they don’t deserve a basic right at all once they become criminal. The impact will not only impact the health of the death-row prisoners, but also, to a broad extent, to other prisoners who will be discriminated by society because their nature of being criminals. Such a discriminative mentality will further marginalize the criminals and prevent the restoritave process for both criminals and society.

2) Against the principle of Proportionality for Retributive Justice

The principle of proportionality requires the punishment to fit the crime. For the prisoners who already have sentenced with death penalty, they are already being punished severely because of the crime they committed–they already being deprived of their right of life–a highest value of human right. Nothing should add additional to this sentencing because nothing could be more severe than taking away those prisoner’s fundemental right to live. To treat them as objects of experiment and further more, without any respect of their own will or opinion, it’s bladent discrimination and arbitrary against the rule of justice.

Another question to argue about is that, is it moral to use death-row prisoners as guinea pigs for medical experiment? The propostion never showed us why it’s morally justified to do so. To force anyone to be experimented for medical research without their informed consent is both illegal and immoral. Medical ethics requires doctors or pharmacautical companies to conduct their experiments with the informed consent from patients or volunteers, which means that an individual should be fully informed about the potential harms or benefits an experiments would like to bring. We think there’s no point that such a basic moral principle could be tramped, this should be applied equally to both general public and prisoners, for the latter group although being deprived of their freedom or life, there’s no justification why they also deprived the right to manage their own body. It should be a basic working ethics abide by doctors and pharmacautical manufactures.

The fourteenth Amendment of the United States states that all citizens should have equal protection rights. Although prisoner’s are often times deprived on their right of liberty, for death-row prisoners their right of life as well, they should not be deprived for their basic human rights, including freedom of religion, freedom of expression and freedom to sue the prison or government etc. if they are being unfairly maltreated. The prison and government still have the obligation to provide them with food, clothing, and in some cases the opportunity to work and even learning(there are some university debating societies in the United States visit prisoners and held parliamentary debates with them, some of them are pretty good: ). Of course we understand that for the case of death-row prisoners, debating might sound too fancy but the point here is that they should not be excluded the basic human rights as mentioned above regardless of what sentence they got. In the case of medical treatment, they should have the basic right of informed consent. One fact is that, prisoner’s rights are most likely to be ignored because of the stereotype mindset that criminals don’t deserve rights and not giving them basic rights it’s part of the punishment they should get. Such a mindset is fundementally wrong and dangerous. First of all, Putting them in prison or to die is already the punishement. Such a mindset makes the group of prisoners the easiest one to be discriminated and taking advantage of. Prisoners are the most volunarable group of people that least likely to get legal assistance which is unfair and unconstitutional.

Under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and US Constitution, it is clear stated that cruel and unusual punishment should be prohibited. It means that the government has no right to impose prisoners with cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment regardless of the degree of severity of their crimes. To treat death row prisoners with nonconsensual medical experiment, with unknown potential harm and risk to them, is such a cruel and inhuman punishment without applying any legal process to justify this action. It’s absolutely degrading as the prisoners are treated as animals or mere objects without consent, basically a convenient human guinea pig. Any civilized society should not allow this cruel punishment happen because it goes against the fundemental basis of that society, which is the respect and protection of liberty, rights and freedom as a citizen. All across the world or even history there’s rules against cruel and unusual punishment. As early as it written in Bill of Rights by King Williams III and Queen Mary II in 1687, and as wide as it adopted in article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of UN General Assembly in 1948. Similar articles appear in European Convention of Human rights in 1950 and Charter of the Fundemental Human Rights of EU in 2000. Besides, US is one of the 148 countries signed and ratified the UN Convention Against Torture which was passed by 1984. The Eighth Amendment of US Constitution also stated that there should be no cruel or unusual punishment. Propositon’s model is a serious violation of the baise value of justice universally acknowledged by international conventions and US own constitution and Bill of Rights. The botton line of justice for a civilized society is that we do not allow any forms of cruel and unusual punishment. To treat death convicts as objects of experiment WITHOUT their consent across this line and should not be uphold as means to real justice, for however noble ends the proposition sides claims. A vaccine should be developed and acquired under legal experiments with the consent of volunteers. Save life should not be based through tramping life and the legal rights such a life possess. This will degrade the meaning and spirit of real liberty, justice and human rights the US government is based upon. It would be a big mock of the democratic system US founding fathers tried so hard to establish 233 ago. Somehow the US has a reputation for the way they treat their prisoners. We can see from the example of Guantanamo Bay how degrading and hypercritical it is for cruel and unusual punishment or torture to exist in a democratic society, and how much condemination and criticism it received accross the world. The proposition’s plan will only deteriorate the situation and further damage the international image of US as the biggest Western democracy, let alone to say how much wrong it is to use cruel punishment to those prisoner. Obama already pledged to close the Guantanamo to correct this fundemental flaw in the justice system, we have no reason to believe that the US Department of Health and Human Services could act beyond the same reasons the president upholds to allow and even supervise the use of rightless human guinea pigs.

Yes the opposition probably would cry, not for proposition’s thoughs but for the fall of justice and civilized society their thoughts will lead to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruel_and_unusual_punishment

1. First of all, the opposition understands from the beginning that the case is set in the US and limited to death-penalized prisoners for pandemic vaccines. What we are trying to show is that the plan not only hurts the legal rights of prisoners but also the justice of a civilized society, while the proposition didn’t address anything in their first argument why legally or morally this model stands. All they tried to convey in their first point is that medical vaccine is important and urgent for possible pandemic outbreak. We say by just stating the urgency of the need of vaccine(which we don’t deny) doesn’t give any direct legal justification about why the prisoners should be targetted as the subjects, and especially, when this could done without their consent. It is worth emphasizing that that the opposition never argue that prisoners should be totally excluded in the medical experiment, what we concern and believe is the key issue here is that why the state has the absolute right to force them doing so without their consent. We don’t think the propositon mentioned this point at all in their opening phrase.

2. Also, we don’t quite understand when the proposition side said and I quote here: “we are glad that the oppositon side stands at our side for the first time.” As much as we share the same compassion of medical research for pandemic disease, we at no time agrees that the extra cruel and unusual punishment should be imposed on death-row prisoners. We stand for a civilized society with the rule of justice and law, that even in death penalty, which occurs in rarest cases, should be conducted in a compassionate way, while the proposition seems to assume that the government automatically have the right to do so no matter what. But seeing the rebuttal we are very glad that the proposition side for the first time listed out the right of prisoners, a point we pleasantly take as now understood by both sides: prisoner DO have rights. This is a good place to start. The difference is that prop trying to seperate the rights of innocent than convicts, but a more important question to answer here is not that do the convicts different from the innocent? but do we have the right to make them different? In other words, could we deprive people’s natural right just because they are convicted? Certain rights are born with that nobody or nothing can take it away. They are so basic that cease to be utalitarian. The prop side trying to infringe the natural right of the death-row prisoners using the absolute state power, the opp firmly against it as it not only bladently discriminate equal born right but also imposing cruel punishment. In the case of the medical experiment, it’s the basic right of the convicts to have informed consent. They should be informed about the potential harm and risk, and have the final say for whether to sacrifice their personal autonomy over body or health for the experiment. If they agrees to do so then it’s fine but if they don’t agree, there’s no legal ground to impose a government action. Otherwise it’s called cruel and unusual punishemnt that does not fly with the justice system. The government can end their life by a bullet or wheelchair through legal procesure, but can not randomly inject unknown substance to their body which might lead to unknown result. We firmly believe such a basic right of consent for experiment can not be taken away for all citizens, innocent or convicts. Like mentioned, basic rights are natural that they stop to be utalitarian. We can not infringe people’s basic human rights for the so called-greater good, whether it’s small or big group, majority or minority, rich or poor, warm-hearted volunteers or death-row prisoners–no one or nothing could make the right different.

3. Plus, we understand that you are focusing on death-row prisoners. However, by talking about other prisoners or the whole society doesn’t ignore the notion of the debate. What we wanna to talk about is the impact to justice system and society from a big picture. It’s quite relevant to consider how other stakeholders like other prisoners or the society would be influenced by the policy you proposed. The impact is that this further people’s antagonism to criminals, not just death-row prisoners but all prisoners as a whole, or even worse the antaganism between society and criminals, because a society that allow the death-row prisoners to be experimented like rabbits or guinea pigs clear don’t carry out much thought about their rights. Further discrimination from the public might deepen and criminals would be further marginalized by this policy. This would decrease the rehabilitative function of justice, meaning prisoners as a whole would be harder to be reformed or accepted by society when having a chance to go back to society. Yet rehabilitation is a key principle justice should seek to uphold. As civilization develops, our society should move beyond the form of retributive justice, having less violent to violent punishment but aiming to reforming more and more people. Unfortunately, the prop’s model wouldn’t achieve these goals of real justice at all because it aims at infringing prisoner’s rights and bring more backlash to the justice system. A society with the “great good” achieved in this way would not go far, and not a civilized one to be praised for.

Besides, the prop failed to address the principle of retributive justice. A basic rule is that the punishment need to fit for crime. For death-penalized prisoners, the death itself is already the punishment. In fact, the death punishment is considered as a cruel and unusual punishment in some cases. There’s no compelling case to further punish them to pay their “debt” to society in any other way.

I am afraid the refutation itself reveals that the prop takes a very unethical attitude toward medical experiment. There are cases that doctor’s ethics challenged by the circumstances, but there’s no analogy between the situation of two patients prop mentioned and the experiment on prisoners. First of all, experiment on prisoners does not necessarily lead to better result or quick discovery of the vaccine. In fact, it might need more attention or supervision than normal volunteers as the death-row prisoners are in special custody that not always fit for a specific condition required by an experiment. For any doctors or pharmacautical companies, the real dilemma is that it’s completely aganist their ethics to use anyone for medical experiment without informed consent. It’s not only unethical but also illegal. For death-row prisoners, although they have a foreseeable desease of life, it does not mean they can be deprived of the right of consent and be used as convenient objects. Medical ethics is not a mere ideal in perfect conditions, but a very basic line of work all doctors and pharmacautical companies abide by.

Justice! Protection is one of the purposes of Justice System, which we explained earlier that already been achieved when the criminals are putting in prison. It quiet assertive to say that treating prisoner’s like guinea pigs would not increase the antagonism between prisoners and society, as it is such an obvious discriminative plan to tramp a prisoner’s basic human rights. Such a discrimination can’t be more explicit when the propostion says”since the death row convincts will not be released back to the general public, there’s no need for this consideration.” We say this sounds more like an eye-to-eye retribution instead of real consideration for the goal of justice system in the long-term. A much better way is to treat the prisoners as responsible decision makers with their basic rights, who could realize their crime or “debt” as the prop states, and voluntarily choose to take part in the experiment, rather than to force them to participate no matter what. The thing here is not that since they will not be released back to society so don’t bother to care about them, but that even in prison these death-row convicts as well as other prisoners will have an opportunity to be reformed with respect of equal basic rights and realize what they still can do for the greater good–and that’s a real powerful or functioning justice system should aime for. We as oppostion aim for protecting innocent people as well. But unlike the proposition side, we realize that real security and protection of innocent people could not be achieved by force or violence without legal or moral consideration.