Challenge #02307-F117: Adequate Testing Procedures
The History of crash-test dummies is one of Sheer Deathworlder Thinking. Instead of doing the sane thing and wait, till the technology is safe enough, they relied in the past on test with crash-test dummies.
Fun fact: Aliens did not know, that the First Dummies were actually other Humans. -- Anon Guest
There's a crucial difference between Havenworlders, Deathworlders, and what one might consider normal cogniscents. That particular difference is in how they approach the relative safety of technology. For most cogniscents, new technology is treated as a curiosity until such time as it has been thoroughly tested for all plausible hazards, and then only employed with all due caution. Havenworlders go overboard on all possible safety measures before going near new technology, exhausting every single thing they could worry about until it is fretted into never having a single thing to cause harm.
Deathworlders dive headlong into new technology, often before it is tested at all, and find out about all potential dangers through 20/20 hindsight. Humans, especially, did this a lot. They took the starter knowledge that radiation could treat and eliminate some cancers, and expanded it into a health treatment to eliminate all cancers for more than a decade before discovering... whoops. Radiation can also cause cancers, too.
They put motors on carriages formerly drawn by horses, and then make them go as fast as possible. Then they wait half a century or more before figuring out that -perhaps- the bodies within should be restrained for security in the event of an unexpected collision. How do they test this? In the most logical way that Deathworlders are capable of. By using the bodies of their deceased. It just gets worse from there.
A Human scientist used himself as a test subject to find out exactly how much a Human body could withstand before encountering harm. He rigged up tests and filmed them. He waited until he was healed whilst devising the next test that would - with enough weight and impact force - harm him anew.
Humans are insane. If anyone needed further proof, they need look no further than the intense debate surrounding safety restraints in their everyday vehicles. The companies responsible for the manufactory of them refused to devote any portion of their profits towards acting responsibly about their manufacture. They spread lies, misinformation, and ridiculous 'what if' scenarios that were then taken up by the larger portion of the populace who were reluctant to change.
Finally, after mountains of evidence and mounting death tolls, restraints within vehicles became mandatory. However, depending on the region, the legal need to use them was not.
The same pattern repeated itself in other fields, especially the field of medicine. When testing drugs for efficacy, science selected only the male half of the population for Human tests. They cited the female reproductive cycle and its unreliability of consistent hormone output as a reason why this should be so, as opposed to the reason why it should not. Then, once the medicine was "in the wild", the problems abounded. Safe dosage in relation to body mass, the aforementioned hormone fluctuations in regards to side effects of the medicine in question. Whether or not the medication was safe for a gestating person... the list went on.
As did the atrocities. Not just for decades, not just for generations, but for centuries. Anyone else would have developed synthetic bio-replication devices to test the entire gamut of hormonal, reproductive, and allergen-specific reactions. Not Humans. Humans continued to test everything on Humans and then complain about the price in lives lost, lives ruined, and of course, in money expended on recompense.
Humanity, upon encountering the synthetic biological test dummy, immediately decried it as 'disgusting' and attempted to argue the benefits of testing on actual living Humans as opposed to a mere machine.
There was not a similar hue and cry to using crash-test dummies instead of Human volunteers. Possibly because of the dearth of Human volunteers to strap themselves into a speeding vehicle and maybe die. There was no parallel shortage of Humans so desperate for a cure that they were willing to take a chance on being poisoned to death. Some companies, surprising no-one who's analysed late-stage capitalism, made huge amounts of money out of this.
Fortunately, there are always groups of Humans who make choices based on the best morals, and since capitalism profits off of pain and murder, the moral side won through the eventual power of sheer numbers. The market realised that there were more options and a greater likelihood of correct dosages and accurate medical predictions from the simulator-tested medicines than the ones used on the more traditional 'sacrificial victim' option. Therefore, went flooding to the more reliable choices.
It only took three decades for the 'sacrificial victim' model of medical testing to go extinct.
Now, if only the Galactic Alliance could gently remove Humanity from its tendency to do things first and figure out how they went wrong later...
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / snake3d]
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Humans are insane indeed.
So many things go wrong with every invention,with every so-called advancein technology and the like.
Environmental pollution is driving us crazy,and yet there seems to be no way to prevent mega corporations from growing out of proportion and producing as much waste as possible while depleting our resources and allegedly we are the ones aking for that or encouraging that with our demands.
Today I read a headline that went along the lines of Adidas cannot meet all the demand of sport items. I can't remember when was the last time I could afford some sports item. i'm sure there must be tons of people with closets full of every single item, in all colors, shapes and fabrics. It's crazy.
Your story made me think about pharmaceutical companies and how much opacity hides behind their products.
So much for our alleged superiority
I really like your way of writing, specially your english.
Humans are insane indeed, we are just running forward without even caring about the damage we are causing. They are trying to find life on other planets, whats the point? When you cannot even save the planet where life already exists.