Hi, a couple of questions if that's okay. Firstly: how does medical torture differ from torture used to obtain a confession both by technique/attitude/methodology and by impact on the victim? Secondly: does punishment used by, for example, prison officers work to prevent inmates/victims/etc. from causing trouble or fighting back? You often say that torture makes victims more resistant to their torturers but is this always the case or more in terms of interrogation?
Sorry, me again. I don’t think I was clear when asking about medical torture. I meant to ask more about torturers attitudes towards keeping patients alive, especially if there is a limited number of people they have access to (e.g. people who are born with a genetic mutation that is not very common). Would more advanced technology be more likely to be used, and would that depend on who the torturers are (or who they are supported by). Sorry for asking lots of questions, just answer a few
-
Just answer a few? My friend have you seen the blog? I type more then half of tumblr and there’s no one here to stop me. :)
In seriousness, I’m passionate about this stuff and I run the blog because I want to share my knowledge. I really believe that we can build a better, kinder world by gaining a better understanding of violence and the long term effects it has on people.
I think I’m going to leave the first question til last because it’s a little more complicated and it depends on whether you’re talking about something that’s closer to an unethical experiment, or torture with pseudo-scientific trappings. More on that later.
I’ve seen no evidence that suggests the context or setting torture takes place in effects a victim’s tendency to resistance.
Most of my regular examples of resistance aren’t actually from interrogation because there is less good record keeping and less evidence. It’s from slavery, forced labour and, yes, prisons.
Torture in a prison setting makes it much harder to run an effective prison.
Partly because it increases resistance in the prison population and partly because by doing this it cuts off the best source of information the guards have: reporting from prisoners.
This does not necessarily mean more overt violence though. When I talk about resistance I mean anything that runs counter to the aims of the torturers. In a prison setting I’d count increased suicides as an act of resistance, because many victims in that setting frame it as an act of resistance.
Torture can make victims less physically capable of fighting back. And victims can also decide after torture that fighting back is not likely to be successful. But that’s not the same as removing resistance and the flip side of that is some victims will become more aggressive towards the guards (even those who didn’t participate in torture), some will use fighting the guards as a form of self harm and some will just become more determined to keep fighting.
Essentially whatever your setting as a method of discipline torture fails spectacularly. It might not mean everyone physically fights but it very quickly converts everyone associated with the victims to broadly ‘causing more trouble’.
The resistance torture produces in survivors seems to be due to how it effects the brain and nervous system. It radicalises other people because we are wired to sympathise with other people’s pain and seeing such extreme examples of it moves us and naturally makes us more supportive of the victim then the attacker.
There’s nothing in the research that’s available to suggest that the setting or the torturer’s motivation effects the victim’s response in the slightest. Resistance appears to be not just natural and common but a key part of how our brain deals with extreme adversity.
I think it’s likely that it has old evolutionary roots, predating our species- that’s entirely my opinion because there isn’t much research on torture anyway, let alone on the roots of our responses to it.
I think that brings me to the ‘medical torture’ portion of your questions.
I’m still not sure what you mean by that term. Doctors can be torturers and torture has taken place in medical establishments but I think it’s a mistake to label these incidents as ‘scientific’ or ‘medical’.
For the purposes of writing I tend to draw a distinction between ‘unethical experimentation’ and ‘pseudo-scientific torture’. The difference is whether the villain in your story is actually conducting experiments or not.
Experiments are not compatible with torture. Experiments require consistent conditions, thorough record keeping and making precise, small, singular changes to measure the effect they have. Experiments require control at a level which is frankly somewhat insane.
Torture by contrast is completely uncontrolled; it undermines attempts at controlling the environment, confounding factors and any record keeping.
I think you should start off by reading about what medical testing is actually like. I have a post on how we conduct medical experiments here. I have a post on what unethical experimentation looks like and medical ethics more broadly here.
Experiments can be smart and cruel but torture is not and can never be inventive or intelligent. My advice is not to conflate the two.
If you want your villains to be acting like scientists then I’d suggest reading about Tuskegee Syphilis trials, Henrietta Lacks and the Minnesota Starvation experiment. Then step back, put yourself in the villain’s shoes, think about what they want to discover. And pretend the victims are cell cultures or pieces of plant.
If you want your villains to act like torturers then there’s no room for science. There might be scientific-looking decoration like white coats or bunsen burners or bottles of chemicals, but that doesn’t mean any data is being collected or any systematic control is being applied to the victims.
In torture the point is pain. In science, ethical or not, the point is results and records. Torturers avoid recording things, lie in records and destroy records. They also regularly refuse to follow instructions or don’t follow them properly, things which would render most experimental results void. Oh and they can also be so focused on causing pain that they don’t even notice the victim’s responses.
Whichever setting you pick I say again: there is no evidence that the setting, trappings or the torturer’s motivation effects the victim’s response to torture. The torturer has no control over the victim’s response, behaviour or symptoms.
The rest of the questions depend on whether you’ve decided you’re showing unethical scientific experiments or torture.
Torturers are unskilled and avoid using complex equipment of any kind.
Scientists rely on specialist skills, knowledge and often high tech equipment. However most of the famous unethical experiments on humans have not used high tech equipment. Most of them have been variants on ‘lets watch how people die from this awful wound/disease’.
That said- I do know of a few extremely unethical experiments that did use high tech, specialist equipment. It’s not impossible.
I don’t remember seeing any examples of unethical experiments where scientists went out of their way to keep experimental subjects alive. The only example I can think of off the top of my head where subjects might have been considered ‘rare’ are- some of the experiments Elsie Lacks was subjected to*.
Some of the experiments Elsie was subjected to were limited to children with epilepsy and there weren’t very many in the institution Elsie was housed in. To the point where it seems as though every single epileptic child in the institute was used in several experiments.
No measures were taken to preserve the lives of these children and Elsie herself died very young.
I can’t say for certain that this is typical because I don’t have enough examples where the experimental subjects were rare. But based on other unethical experiments- I’d say it’s unlikely scientists conducting these experiments would protect the lives of their victims.
The victim’s death is a result.
I can’t decide whether torture or unethical experimentation is the right choice for your story. I think if you want any sort of emotional response to the victim (anger, hate, etc-) then a torturer is a better fit. A scientist conducting unethical experiments is unlikely to- see their victim as any more then a piece of equipment.
In a prison setting both torture and unethical experimentation are possible.
I think it depends on what you want your villain to be and what they see as the point of the abuse. If the abuse is the point then you’re writing torture, and you should really avoid suggesting it’s scientific.
If the abuse is incidental and it’s the experiment that’s important to the villain, then a scientist might be a better fit. Which means that- the best way to approach the abuse is as a side effect. It’s not about actively causing the character pain, it’s about ignoring things that are harming the victims. So, a scientist might keep their victims in solitary confinement, not because they’re trying to cause harm but because they don’t care about the fact humans need social interaction.
Without more details about the story I think I’m going to leave that there.
If you’re interested in writing unethical experimentation I’d highly recommend reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by R Skloot. You might also want to look up Unit 731 from the Second World War.
I hope that helps. :)
*See The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by R Skloot
Huh this was an interesting read
