It is hard to look at the tumor and not come away with the feeling that one has encountered a powerful monster in its infancy
Siddhartha MukherjeeRead
This was yet another colonial fascination: to create the conditions of misery in a population, then subject it to social or medical experimentation.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the ethical violations of colonialism, emphasizing the suffering caused by exploiting populations for experiments.
Siddhartha Mukherjee's quote highlights a disturbing aspect of colonialism where the colonizers intentionally create hardships within a population, only to utilize their suffering as a basis for social or medical experimentation. This perspective underscores how colonial powers often disregarded the humanity of the colonized, viewing them merely as subjects for their scientific and social inquiries, ultimately raising serious moral and ethical questions about the consequences of such exploitative practices.
Themes
ColonialismExploitationExperimentationSufferingEthics
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the ethics of medical research, one might quote this to highlight the dangers of ignoring consent.
More from Siddhartha Mukherjee
All quotes →We may have to learn to live with cancer rather than die of it. It means a big change in our mindset and how we do research. We haven't quite reached there yet.
Siddhartha MukherjeeRead
One day, I had a patient who was going through chemotherapy who came to me and said, 'I'm going to go on with what I'm doing, but I need you to tell me what it is that I'm fighting.'
Siddhartha MukherjeeRead
Nearly every one of the genes that turns out to be a key player in cancer has a vital role in the normal physiology of an organism. The genes that enable our brains and blood cells to develop are implicated in cancer.
Siddhartha MukherjeeRead
It remains an astonishing, disturbing fact that in America - a nation where nearly every new drug is subjected to rigorous scrutiny as a potential carcinogen, and even the bare hint of a substance's link to cancer ignites a firestorm of public hysteria and media anxiety - one of the most potent and common carcinogens known to humans can be freely bought and sold at every corner store for a few dollars.
Siddhartha MukherjeeRead
It felt—nearly twenty-five hundred years after Hippocrates had naively coined the overarching term karkinos—that modern oncology was hardly any more sophisticated in its taxonomy of cancer.
Siddhartha MukherjeeRead
Similar quotes
Propositions show what they say: tautologies and contradictions show that they say nothing.
Ludwig WittgensteinRead
The state does not function as we desired. A man is at the wheel and seems to lead it, but the car does not drive in the desired direction. It moves as another force wishes.
Vladimir LeninRead
Self-knowledge is like lost innocence; however unsettling you find it, it can never be 'unthought' or 'unknown'.
Michael SandelRead
And Nature takes no account of moral consequences, of arbitrary conditions which we create, and which we feel obliged to maintain at any cost.
Kate ChopinRead
How much more suffering is caused by the thought of death than by death itself.
Will DurantRead
A person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment.
B. F. SkinnerRead