Content Warning:
This chapter contains detailed discussions and depictions related to sensitive and potentially distressing topics including historical human experimentation, graphic depictions of wartime atrocities, and ethical dilemmas in medical practice.
Reader discretion is advised.
Ethics
Medical Ethics
To prevent misunderstanding, Jian Qing added two more words: 【Taking a bath.】
It wasn’t a call or a video, Lu Yinxi patted her cheeks, thinking it’s nothing, and replied: 【Aren’t you afraid the phone will fall into the water?】
Jian Qing: 【It’s in a sealed bag.】
Working in a hospital, with who knows how many messy germs on the hands, and the phone being a frequently touched item, everyone is used to putting it in a disposable sealed bag.
Lu Yinxi felt relieved and asked: 【Why are you only bathing now? Usually at this time, aren’t you already lying in bed?】
Jian Qing: 【Shopping.】
The female colleagues in the department and laboratory heard that they were going abroad and pressured Zhang Yue into taking on many shopping tasks for them. Not familiar with those cosmetics and luxury goods, Zhang Yue asked Jian Qing to go to the mall with him.
Zhang Yue is a good-natured person who always responds to requests, but Jian Qing initially didn’t have much patience and flatly refused.
Anxiously, Zhang Yue scratched his head and used reverse psychology: “Xiaolu also loves makeup and dressing up. You’re going abroad, and if you don’t buy some gifts for your cousin, you’re not being a good cousin!”
Jian Qing then agreed to go along.
Having a soft spot seems to make it easier to be manipulated.
The two chatted intermittently.
Lu Yinxi counted on her fingers the times they had met, saying: 【When we meet next time, I’ll pick you up at the train station, and we’ll pretend to be online friends meeting for the first time.】
She started creating a script for them again, imagining how they had chatted online for ten years and sparks flew.
Jian Qing pointed out: 【Ten years ago, your biological age was only 10】
Chatting and sparking with a ten-year-old child would be extremely inappropriate.
Lu Yinxi: 【…You should consider me as 15 years old. When I was 15, you were 19 or 20 years old. What were you doing then?】
Jian Qing: 【Studying abroad.】
As a student in a joint training program, although the tuition was covered by the school, she still had to cover her living expenses, so she worked while studying.
Lu Yinxi: 【At that time, I had just started high school, which was a boarding school, and I met many classmates and friends. They would praise me in an appreciative tone for being smart and amazing when they saw me writing and eating with my left hand. The friends I made back then were all gentle and kind people, and I learned a lot from them.】
Her childhood traumas were overcome through her own resistance and were completely healed by her high school classmates and friends.
During the period of personality shaping and worldview formation, she encountered a group of very warm people.
Jian Qing recalled her own high school experience and found no beautiful memories.
Lu Yinxi deliberately asked: 【And you?】
(If you're not reading on littlepandatranslations.com, it means this has been stolen)
Jian Qing, not wanting to ignore her, replied: 【I started high school at 13, younger than my classmates by 1 to 2 years, and couldn’t connect with them in conversation.】
Her personality was solitary, and she was always alone.
Before the age of 13, she lived with her mother and attended the middle school with the worst reputation locally.
Half of the students would sleep or play on their phones during class; during biology class, the teacher would teach physiological knowledge, while students dared to make lewd jokes, making the teacher cry; the school’s toilets frequently became sites for fights, with girls pulling each other’s hair and faces, spouting foul language; on weekends, boys would arrange fights, often using rolling pins, iron rods, knives, and sticks in group brawls.
Fortunately, she had excellent grades at that time, and her desk mate was a pretty girl who was also a school bully. She lent her assignments to the bully to copy, so she became someone under the bully’s protection, and no one dared to harass her during the three years of middle school.
After turning 13, she was brought back to the Jian family by Jian Zhenghe.
Then she transferred to a top-ranked, prestigious high school’s experimental class locally.
In the experimental class, after class, it wasn’t as lively as the ordinary class next door. The class adopted a last-place elimination system, and students were all seed candidates striving for top universities, seizing every minute to practice after class, fearing being kicked out of the experimental class after the next exam.
Her grades were passable at her original middle school, but in high school, surrounded by classmates from affluent families, who were well-rounded and had received elite education from a young age, her foundation seemed relatively weak in comparison.
Throughout the whole first year of high school, she was at the bottom, and several times almost got kicked out.
By the second year, she was steadily in the top five of her grade.
The Jian family had several siblings, all relying on Jian Zhenghe’s donations and sponsorship fees to be sent to prestigious domestic and international universities. Only she and Jian Yan got in on their own efforts.
She chatted with Lu Yinxi about her high school and middle school, and as they chatted, her mood suddenly became very pleasant, with a faint smile on her lips.
Lu Yinxi squatted in the simple film set, with her eyes fixed on the phone.
She read Jian Qing’s words, imagining what Jian Qing was like back then, and a smile appeared on her lips as well.
Those times she did not participate in unfolded one by one in their conversation.
Not talking about love or affection, just sharing past life experiences like friends, is enough to make her happy for a whole day.
After the overseas meeting ended, Hu Jianjun’s team flew directly to the international airport of H City.
In the morning, they were invited to give an academic lecture at H City Hospital. In the afternoon, Hu Jianjun hired a car to take the team to the outskirts to visit a site of a Japanese invader army unit.
Zhang Yue looked at the ink-colored regular script characters engraved on the stone tablet at the entrance and read aloud: “Site of the Japanese invader’s 731st unit. This is the place where the Japanese army conducted human experiments back then, infamous indeed.”
The buildings were made of red bricks and red walls, with parts of the walls already mottled and peeling.
The group entered the east side of the building, stood in front of the restoration plan diagram, and started chatting animatedly.
“Back then, they claimed to be the ‘Kwantung Army Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Unit,’ saying it was for epidemic prevention research. I spit! In fact, it was to conduct human experiments here.”
“The unit’s founder was a biology Ph.D., Shiro Ishii, obsessed with researching biological weapons. Scum!”
“Look at these names: rat breeding room, gas chamber, frostbite laboratory…”
“They collected many bacteria, like anthrax, cholera, plague, gas gangrene… all directly injected into living people for experiments, and even performed live dissections. When they withdrew, they blew up the main experimental building.”
(If you're not reading on littlepandatranslations.com, it means this has been stolen)
“Those criminals, however, lived freely and leisurely. After the war ended, America exchanged research data with them, exempting them from war crimes.”
Everyone cursed in their hearts: bastards! Beasts! Not human!
From the diagram, they walked to the evidence exhibition hall, which had not only shocking photographic materials but also holographic images, recreating the scenes of live dissections.
Back then, those people were tied to wooden stakes, airplanes dropped bacterial bombs from the sky, and after getting infected, they were taken back for live dissection. Their organs were removed for observation, and then the bodies were directly pushed into the crematorium.
Everyone watched in silence, unable to utter a single word.
Doctors who were supposed to save lives became demons who killed without remorse.
To what extent can the evil of human nature reach?
Hu Jianjun said, “Coming to H City, I thought I should bring you to see this place. In the oncology department, you all have to deal with human trials. You must remember, drugs and medical technology are for treating and saving lives. You must follow ethics, adhere to the Helsinki Declaration1, and ensure the rights of the subjects…”
In recent years, the scientific community experienced a “gene-edited babies” incident, and since then, Hu Jianjun has particularly emphasized medical ethics.
In the past, when Jian Qing heard Hu Jianjun’s humanities education content, she only treated it as wind passing by her ears. Now, she remembered Lu Yinxi also tugging at her sleeve and saying, “Medicine is for saving lives, you must not use it to do bad things.”
Do not do bad things, do not do bad things…
She hated only those few people. Considering the time, some of them are about to be released from prison.
In the suburbs of Jiangzhou City, inside a photography studio.
Outside the operating room, a young man paced back and forth. Suddenly, the door of the operating room opened, and a male doctor rushed out and shouted, “The mother has suddenly started bleeding heavily, the situation is critical. Family of the mother, save the mother or the child? Quickly sign!”
The man squatted painfully on the ground, holding his head in his hands, crying loudly.
“Cut—”
The crying stopped abruptly.
In front of the monitor, the director of Group B stood up angrily, saying, “Who? Who shouted ‘cut’? I didn’t shout ‘cut’!”
Chu Yan also stood up, saying seriously, “I shouted.”
Everyone present focused their gaze in that direction.
Lu Yinxi was teaming up with Lan Zhou to play a game, and upon hearing this, she looked over, but her hands didn’t stop moving.
“Oh, Doctor Chu,” the director immediately put on a smiling face and asked, “What’s wrong? Is there a problem?”
Chu Yan was personally assigned by President Jian as the instructor, so they didn’t dare to offend him.
Chu Yan replied, “This part is unrealistic, don’t film it. Is this how your script is written?”
An Ruosu retorted, “Hey, I didn’t write this part.”
She couldn’t have written such a brainless segment; it was the male actor who brought a screenwriter into the group and added the scene.
The male doctor actor removed his mask and loudly asked, “How is it unrealistic? Doesn’t this happen often?”
(If you're not reading on littlepandatranslations.com, it means this has been stolen)
Chu Yan explained word by word: “In a regular hospital, a regular doctor would not ask the question of whether to save the mother or the child. Who can be saved and who cannot be saved is a decision the doctor will make. They will not let a family member without medical knowledge make that decision. The family only has the right to be informed, not the right to choose. The mother is a natural person, the fetus, not having been born, is considered a non-natural person. The law and medical ethics require ensuring the life of the natural person first. There is no concept of choosing between saving the mother or the child. In any emergency, if it is possible to save the mother, the doctor will only save the mother.”
The male actor still used the same argument: “We are filming TV, not a documentary, why be so serious?”
The director nodded in agreement: “That’s right, filming should emphasize dramatic conflict, to be able to stir the audience’s emotions. The decision of whether to save the mother or the child, after the protagonist’s conflicted and painful choice, choosing to save the child, this segment when aired will definitely provoke heated debate among the audience. Topics like women’s rights, topics about pregnant women, mother-in-law conflicts, all could join in, this is a big hot topic!”
Lu Yinxi snorted and stood up, aligning with Chu Yan, bluntly saying: “For the sake of dramatic conflict, for the sake of popularity, ignoring basic facts, then our drama isn’t called a hardcore medical drama, it’s a melodramatic soap opera in medical disguise. Our crew isn’t sincerely paying tribute to medical workers, just using medicine as a gimmick to exploit medical workers.”
The director spread his hands: “Xiaolu, with what you said, I’m damned if I do, damned if I don’t…”
Lan Zhou put away the phone and passed the ball to Director Zhou Hongmao: “Why not ask Director Zhou? I also think it’s not very reasonable.”
The author has something to say:
I will go to Weibo to share a documentary about Unit 731 for you. If you’re interested, you can go and watch it.
Reference materials:
[1] Documentary: “The Truth of Unit 731”; Source: NHK
Footnotes
- Helsinki Declaration: A set of ethical principles developed by the World Medical Association (WMA) to guide medical research involving human subjects. First adopted in 1964, it emphasizes the importance of respecting the rights, safety, and well-being of research participants. Key principles include informed consent, the need for scientifically sound research, the importance of weighing risks and benefits, and the requirement for ethical review by independent committees. The Declaration is regularly updated to address new ethical challenges in medical research.
Discover more from Little Panda
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.