[extropy-chat] Medical Experimentation on Prisoners, and Slippery Slopes

[Mike Dougherty]

On 4/26/07, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:
> I have always wondered why criminals condemned to death cannot
> volunteer for medical experiments. Perhaps someone can explain
> clearly why that would, what?, lead menacingly down a slippery
> slope to applying the death penalty more often than it would be
> otherwise?   (This sort of slippery slope argument, I have learned,
> always needs to be shown on a case by case business---else we
> admit very foolish arguments, such as "I shouldn't pay my taxes
> because that's a slippery slope towards complete tyranny", or,
> "banning assault weapons or weapons of mass destruction is a
> slippery slope towards putting a population entirely at the mercy
> of its government and so making tyranny possible", etc.

I heard on the radio about a case where a woman murdered and
dismembered her husband, and they were keeping her under psychiatric
observation for fear of suicide risk.  So we need to make sure she is
kept alive so the state can officially judge her?  I don't get it.

disclaimer:  I'm sure she's really a nice person and that I am being
mean by talking this way about a convicted murderer.