[Sir_Prometheus]

I'm only a little way into the book.  But I just finished the section where Butch does all her trials.  And initially, I just thought, or assumed, really, that she was just treating known CFD cases, or emerging cases, and doing reasonable controls to see what helped fight it, or didn't.  But then it became clear that she was purposefully infecting new metahuman subjects.  And a vampire and ghoul.  And feeding uninfected people to both the ghoul and vampire and seeing if they got infected in turn.  That's messed up. 

But none of the jackpoint commentators say anything about this, beyond one person asking "did you feed the vampire".  They all just basically thank her for her work and move on.  It's not really stated where these subjects come from, if they were convicted criminals, corporate goons, or what, I'm mostly just assuming they came off the street. 

Again, that's messed up. 

[Sendaz]

But Butch is not enjoying this at all and is having to make several difficult decisions in pursuit of trying to find a cure to save others.

You can not quite compare this to the infamous 'Angel of Death' who by many accounts of survivors and guards delighted in bizarre experimentation and torture with little regard for the health or safety of his subjects.

Butch tries to deal as humanely as reasonably possible and again it is taken it's toll on the doc.

Is Butch a saint?  No.

But there are few others I would want at my back if I was facing what they were.

[Sir_Prometheus]

Purposely sacrificing random people is not "not a saint", it's horrendously evil. OK, great, she's not a sadist and doesn't especially enjoy it.  So?  That makes it like .000001% better. 

[martinchaen]

No. Just no.

If you are seriously making that comparison, you need to read the hell up on what Mengele actually did...

[Mirikon]

No, Prometheus, it isn't evil. It is part of medical research at its most fundamental. When looking to try and profile a disease and find a cure, you need test subjects. Even today, you know how they test a vaccine for something like Anthrax? They take a bunch of people, give them the vaccine (and some of them get a placebo, because you need a control group) and intentionally expose them to Anthrax. It is the only way to know it works. There's only so much you can do with animal trials. When dealing with something that affects the brain like CFD does, animal trials are completely useless. You can call it evil all you like, but these are the basic methods doctors and pathologists have been using for years to work towards cures for diseases. Even before they knew about things like viruses, there had always been medical schools hiring grave robbers to literally dig up cadavers for dissection. You know how we found out that HIV was spread through more than just gay people having sex? People went out and did studies. And some of those studies involved things like exposure to infected bodily fluids, or exposure to the same air to see if it was airborne, and so on. And because of that, we now know enough to at least control the spread of AIDS in the first world. Even in Shadowrun, you know all those tests people have done on the Infected, trying to find a cure, or a vaccine, or some way to just 'manage' the situation? Those involved Infected test subjects. And you better believe they got fed.

[ProfGast]

Butch actually addresses this issue partway through.  Another Jackpointer calls her on her actions and brings up the Hippocratic Oath (Which interestingly seems to imply that Butch, unlike a lot of street docs, may have COMPLETED her medical training).

Butch then replies with her justification on how her violations in fact follow her reading of the oath.  And let's also be straight.  These are shadowrunners.  They do illegal, immoral and unethical things on a daily basis and get paid for it.  Kidnapping, extortion, premeditated murder, theft, arson, the list goes on and on.  There is no black and white in the shadows, only darker and lighter shades of gray.  Evil in this case is simply relative.  Butch acknowledges that her actions can be construed as morally repugnant but at least justifies that it is for a greater good.

Does that forgive her?  Maybe.  Maybe not.   It's not really my place to judge.   I probably would not do the same in her case, but then, I don't live in a world where Dragons can snack on you, or nanite viruses can take over my being and overwrite my personality.

[Mirikon]

Simple fact is that sometimes you have to make hard choices. Sometimes those choices involve deliberately sending people to their deaths in order to save the greater populace. If you read World War Z, there's a character who came up with a plan to save humanity from the zombie threat. This plan? Take a portion of the population, and evacuate them to 'safe areas', preferably with natural boundaries in the way of any zombies. Concentrate the remaining armed forces there, so you can have a chance of survival. Everyone else? Send them to an isolated area as live bait to keep the swarms away from the retreating forces heading to the safe zone. And this plan was credited with saving the world in the book.

There's a quote that sticks out to me, "The first casualty of the conflict must be our own sentimentality, for its survival will mean our destruction."

[Namikaze]

Good and evil is subjective.  In the long run, I'd rather have Butch doing these tests to know as much as we do about CFD as quickly as we do.  Otherwise, the situation might be WAY worse.  Butch made some sacrifices, personally, professionally, and morally.  But those sacrifices were for the greater good.

[Sir_Prometheus]

No, Prometheus, it isn't evil. It is part of medical research at its most fundamental. When looking to try and profile a disease and find a cure, you need test subjects. Even today, you know how they test a vaccine for something like Anthrax? They take a bunch of people, give them the vaccine (and some of them get a placebo, because you need a control group) and intentionally expose them to Anthrax. It is the only way to know it works. There's only so much you can do with animal trials. When dealing with something that affects the brain like CFD does, animal trials are completely useless. You can call it evil all you like, but these are the basic methods doctors and pathologists have been using for years to work towards cures for diseases. Even before they knew about things like viruses, there had always been medical schools hiring grave robbers to literally dig up cadavers for dissection. You know how we found out that HIV was spread through more than just gay people having sex? People went out and did studies. And some of those studies involved things like exposure to infected bodily fluids, or exposure to the same air to see if it was airborne, and so on. And because of that, we now know enough to at least control the spread of AIDS in the first world. Even in Shadowrun, you know all those tests people have done on the Infected, trying to find a cure, or a vaccine, or some way to just 'manage' the situation? Those involved Infected test subjects. And you better believe they got fed.

Yes, it is clearly evil. 

Do you know what would happen, in the US, if a doctor purposefully gave a healthy person a deadly disease, just to see if they could cure it?  They'd be charged with murder, or attempted murder, depending.

No, they don't in fact infect people with anthrax, or HIV.

The closet that's ever happened was the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, and that was back in 1932 and basically a big racist ball of mess.  It's infamous for a reason. 

I get it, Shadowrunners do evil things.  But they're rarely so casual about it, and most of them have limits. 

As for those of who think anything like this is done in real life (in western civilized countries, anyway) or somehow think it would be ok if it was.......something is wrong with you. 

[Mirikon]

When faced with the potential for a global pandemic (which is what CFD is), I find that my list of things that are OK to halt the spread or find a cure for the disease gets fairly large. It would be really nice if things were black and white, but sometimes there's only the choice of 'find a way to stop this, no matter the cost' or 'watch everything around you burn to the ground'. And you'll note that Butch isn't casual about it. Despite trying to keep a wall of medical detachment, she's pretty clearly haunted by it.

[Dangersaurus]

Yeah, Mengele might be a bad comparison. The best comparison would be British "innoculating" the local indians against small pox by way of infected blankets and hankerchiefs in Philadelphia.

[Sendaz]

Yes, it is clearly evil. 

  You are right.  It is evil and I doubt Butch will ever sleep well from this. 

But that did not mean it was not necessary.

My main objection remains the comparison to Mengele who was a whole other level of evil but that is a debate for another day.

In the meantime in SR, there are governments and corps doing the exact same thing because that is pretty much how experimentation goes.
And do not forget that somebody created this mess in the first place so I shudder to think of the sort of things were going on there.... Cerebus has a lot of ragers wanting payback among others...

The big difference here is that Butch is sharing that data with the rest of them whereas the corps and government are not sharing data with each other and certainly not with the Joe on the street.

Does that make what Butch doing 'right' or moral?   Still a big NO on the moral side, but it does not make the necessity of it any less.

So rather than a constant argument back and forth on morality, why not come down off the pulpit and just tell us what would YOU have done in their place?

YOU have the luxury of reading all the data to date and can sit there to decide, well this worked and that didn't and that should never have happened, but remember Butch didn't have the benefit of hindsight and had to muddle along as best as they could, making good and bad decisions and trying avenues of thought that are quite frankly distasteful but did yield useful information.

Were the Jackpointers a bit casual, perhaps but don't think they will forget either.  I doubt Butch will and she will judge herself harsher than you or I probably could.

Not saying anyone should excuse what she did, but rather than cruxify her entirely out of hand, you might still want to reserve a bit of sympathy for each bit of her that died along the way in this harrowing affair.

[Sir_Prometheus]

You people are way too hung up on Mengele.  Yes, I know everything he did, yes, I think the comparison is apt, in kind if not in mangitutde.  Nonetheless, I've change the title, just because that's NOT what I want to be talking about. 

Other than that, what several of you are saying is shocking, and sorta scary.  Say the swine flu or bird flu had became the epidemics we feared they might, at the time.  Say, 50% death rate.  Do you think the CDC would go around infecting random healthy people in order to run tests on how to treat it?  For the greater good? Cuz they could maybe save millions by sacrificing 25-50 people?  I assure you they would not.  And a society in which they would would be damaged. 

[ProfGast]

I get it, Shadowrunners do evil things.  But they're rarely so casual about it, and most of them have limits. 

Citation needed.  I'm sure if you asked the right people you'd get a response that Shadowrunners are universally evil, immoral and smelly too.

Besides which I don't think Butch is at all casual about this.  It was a fully thought through process after gathering information and SEEING what CFD did to people, from executives, to small children, to close friends.  The fact that she lays it out matter of factly reflects how determined she is at this point.  I don't think there was any part of this undertaken casually.

And in any case, what makes other shadowrunners more excusable?  Or Butch less excusable?  After all to paraphrase Sam Vimes: "Accepting a bribe to let a petty criminal go, or accepting a bribe to let a murderer walk are the same.  Everything else is just haggling about the price."

As for those of who think anything like this is done in real life (in western civilized countries, anyway) or somehow think it would be ok if it was.......something is wrong with you.

That's an awfully small scope you're limiting things to there, and it kind of misses the point.  This isn't real life western civilized countries.  This is alternate future western quasi-civilized countries that are afflicted with an all-but-incurable pandemic threatening life looming on the horizon.  This isn't Mengele's purely academic interests in twins, heterochromia or dwarfism inspired by the opportunity of having a captive population to draw from.  This is desperation fueled by an absolute need for knowledge in order to find a cure in time.

Don't forget, this is Shadowrun in the 2070s.  Some 60 years ago, in the timeline, VITAS I wiped out a quarter of the entire world's population.  Mexico City and Calcutta were both Burned to the Ground in order to attempt to prevent spread.  Africa alone suffered some 800 Million casualties.

10 years later Vitas II stripped another 900 million (10% of the world's population) despite having cures on hand.  As a Doctor in the 2070s, Butch has these statistics hanging over her head.  If the deaths of 20, 30, 50 people could save potentially up to 900 MILLION?   50 doesn't sound so bad anymore.  Is she wrong?  Is she right?  Is she evil?

If she succeeds, will it matter?  Or for that matter... if she fails?

"When one man dies, it's a tragedy.  When thousands die, it's statistics."

[Namikaze]

You bring up a good point, ProfGast.  To carry forward the Mengele analogy, if Mengele had stumbled upon the cure to cancer, or found some way to take humanity to the next step in evolution, I don't know how many people would care about the methods used 80 years later.  Not saying what he did was right, and I'm not saying that what Butch did was right.  But history does have a habit of eventually making the ends justify the means.

To take this even further back - if the neanderthals had not wiped out the cromagnons, we wouldn't exist.  Do we mourn the devastation of the cromagnons?  Not a whit.