Whenever this subject comes up, I struggle internally a little. On the one hand, the sacrifice made to obtain this knowledge was already high in terms of human life; not taking that knowledge is saying all that pain was for nothing. On the other, taking and absorbing that knowledge almost invariably means that it is acceptable, which means it will be done again and as humans we have an incentive to make it undesirable.
This struggle is entirely reasonable. I think it comes down to how we, as world citizens, should regulate this technology, including research, dissemination, and use (if it should be used at all).
What I find abhorrent is the immunity given to those Japanese war criminals who conducted those experiments on Chinese civilians (and ultimately killed them) by the United States at the time.
Yeah, if the deal would be along: we dont execute you if you cooperate, but your crimes are too horrible to ignore, so we will give you humane decent prison time for X decades/life while you cooperate.
But if they were actually pardoned, then it means human suffering and killings were reduced to just numbers on spreadsheet by somebody very high in decision chain. Which means same people without morals get to decide on hundreds if not thousands other situations, without any morality.
Maybe the correct conclusion is that morality is very thin and disposable for those 3 letter agencies, so one should never ever trust just their words, since they mean less than fart in the wind. Also expect bad things happening by default. Nah, I am sure those on HN who posted previously about their 3-letter employer how they pick only very moral, driven and hardworking individuals and how absolutely great it all is were for sure telling truth and onpy truth.
The point of that knowledge was to further biowarfare programs. By pardoning them and then continuing their research, you use that suffering to an end even worse than nothing.
There was no useful fundamental research from Unit 731. Most of the work was on weaponizing existing pathogens as effectively as possible.
