For many years, drinking sea water has been a dangerous and if not lethal way of quenching a thirst. For past years, many people have had to bring their own supply of water on boating trips. If you were stranded on a island, one might not have anything that could quench a thirst without possibly killing one. When the Nazis decided to try and find out a way of curing sea water to make it drinkable, they would have to test it out on people and if not on them selves. Knowing that sea water could be dangerous if the curing process did not work with one of many of their design's, they tested it on Gypsies, which the Nazi's took from one of their many concentration camps. The Nazis preforming this experiment, did not care whether or not a Gypsy died or became dangerously ill. Throughout the experiment, the Gypsies' were just giving the sea water that the Nazi's had tried to cure to make the water drinkable. Even though many of the Gypsies, if not all, were fighting for normal water, all they received was "cured" sea water. The experiment was taking place during World War II, and even though their reason may have been just, they still tested on the Gypsies without their consent. The test subjects licked the floors after they were cleaned because they were so desperate for fresh water, and did not care how they would get it. When the experiment was finished, September 1944, the Nazis who performed this experiment killed the Gypsies they had been testing on.
The Nazis put all these people through this inhumane sea water experiment and many of them suffered a slow and painful death. If there were any survivors left, that were tested on in this experiment, the Nazis who conducted the experiment would kill them. The Nazis were trying to see if they could make seawater into potable water. In the end they were unsuccessful at doing this. What scientists did find out though was how much salt water a human can sustain in his/her body and also how long a person can last without water before dying. This is useful information that has helped save the lives of many people. They saw that there were different stages of dehydration that effected the person by giving them distress, suffering and pain. Doctors can now predict how much water a person need to become hydrated again and be at a healthy state. Though this test was very curl and ethical scientist found out very important information about the body that was used to save and better the lives of people.
Nazi Sea Water Experiment
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By Lally, Phillip, and Gordon
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Very good! Very detailed and well written. It was terrible that all those lives were lost for no reason.
ReplyDeleteThe experiment they performed had many flaws: They used one group of people. They constantly used the salt water, killing the test subjects. They did not have a control group. They used people who were coming from death camps, probably sick.
ReplyDeletewell written, but maybe you could have mentioned the problems in the experiment, and not just the facts. a few typos, but other than that, good
ReplyDeleteI agree with Calvin. The Nazi didn't' seem to keep everything constant. This is a very interesting topic.
ReplyDeleteReally good article! Its very interesting but really messed up. I also find that Calvin's comment is very true and that the Nazis were bad experiment designers.
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