Evaluate: Medical Ethics

I did the Russian Sleep Experiments for my medical ethics piece. In this inhumane experiment, prisoners of war were forcibly kept awake while under the effects of an experimental gas developed by the Russian government. The test subjects eventually mutilated themselves past the point of return, and were driven mad when cut off from the gas.

From this piece I learned the extent of the horrors humanity will go to, and the blurred line between science and science fiction. I translated the essay from the account of one of the surviving doctor's on the case into the russian alphabet and overlayed it on the photomanipulation I made. The encroaching script represent the inhumanity of the scientists performing the experiment, and the blackness sleep itself, with the subjects were driven mad with fear of. Inside the jaundiced, grey, bloodshot eye of the subject is a small, cramped room, a prison really, with a one way mirror for observation This room is much like the one the subjects were kept in and tormented in, and the room inside the eye represents how the experiment took over and destroyed their lives from the inside out.