The Broken Link Between Science and Humanity

“Since when did people start expecting science to be humane? To study the body, you cut it open. To study the mind, you isolate it by crushing the heart. Historically, that’s how science has advanced.”

The previous quote was taken from a videogame I recently played, and it shows clearly how science has advanced thus far. In order to get all the advances in technology, scientists have been isolating their humanity and their morals to discover new aspects of the human body or to find the cure to diseases; and most of the times, they forget that humans are not mere objects of study.

J. Marion Sims is commonly known as the “father of gynecology,” and he found a solution to a childbirth problem in the 19^th century. However, the process of finding the cure was quite polemic because he mainly used black women, and he did not use anesthesia on all the patients. There are cases of women who were tested more than one time—some of them underwent the procedure 30 times, and it is believed that he bought and rented most of his “guinea pigs.” That is not all, he refused to apply anesthesia on all the patients even though it was already available at the time.

This specific example helps me to prove what varied forms of arts have been saying for a long time: science has lost his humanity. It has never been shown clearly, for most of the times is hidden from us; but it is happening, and people will eventually know.