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Comment by rodgerd | Hacker News Reader

> This is also a form of experimentation in COVID-19 that is among the riskiest and most dangerous in the world.

Sweden has a long and revolting involvement of medical experimentation and eugenics on its own citizens, such as unconsented sterilisations, or feeding mental health patients diets designed to induce tooth decay so they could study the teeth rotting in the victims (I will not describe those so afflicted as patients).

In this context, the decision of a prominent Swedish scientist to "go it alone" and experiment on the population who have entrusted themselves to his care is unsurprising as well as tragic.

(And an actual brilliant scientist learns from their results and modifies their hypothesis. He seems to have done very little of either.)

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For English readers, the Wikipedia page for the Vipeholm experiments is a good summary:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vipeholm_experiments

Those experiments seem like a huge net positive for the world. Only a hundred people getting cavities rather than a million sounds pretty good.

Preying on the defenseless is not a net good.

In case you haven't noticed, billions still get cavities.

Human experiments often have a net positive, but that doesn't mean they're not highly unethical.

I’m not sure why you’re getting downvoted, every thing you wrote is verifiably true and documented fact, except perhaps the “go it alone” comment which is uncharitable at best but if you rephrase it to indict the public health agency instead I would tend to agree with the characterization.

As a Swede I‘m appalled at their handling of the matter, particularly when it comes to protecting the elderly. (Which is to say they didn’t.)

Stop spreading such stupid fantasies... Tegnell isn't some crazy scientist that experiments on the swedish population. All of the decision made by the government agency (FHM) has been made by the agency, not by the individual Anders Tegnell.

Saying that Tegnell "goes at it alone" is completely misinformed and comparing the situation to eugenics research is just going to show everyone how little you know about this situation. Stop wasting everyones time...

Ehm, going back to that time to compare what is happening today? You do realize that this is Hitler times right? How was black people treated in USA at this time? Can we please stay out of this type of discussion and instead keep to civilized matters?

For example the argument that the high death in Sweden would not have been any different had we shut down completely because most deaths happened at old age care where the same people travel around the whole city thanks to state trying to cut down on costs. Tegnell did say that they expected the old age care to take steps to limit this travel when they set up the guidelines but this never happened in Stockholm apparently. I know that in my home-town they compartmentalized the care a lot after the outbreak, every person only sees the same two to three faces and the personell groups don't meet any more. And the death rate is no different to last years average in our state.

We do not experiment on people without asking for permission in Sweden. We do expect people to treat us with some respect.

Contrary to popular belief (and to dismay of some users downvoting my comment for merely putting the historical facts straight), it's not just "Hitler times".

Eugenics went on for considerably longer. Eg. compulsory sterilization, sterilization without consent, persisted well until 1970s.

It was similar with lobotomy (carried out until mid- or late 1960s, I think).

See https://www.umu.se/en/news/swedish-big-brother-behind-loboto... for an interesting take on the Swedish case:

> Sweden was more accepting than the US in its attitude toward lobotomy in the 1940s and 1950s. A possible explanation for this may be the strength of paternalism in Sweden, that is, a greater tendency to make decisions on behalf of the patient in Swedish medical culture than in its American counterpart. This is according to Kenneth Ögren from Umeå University in Sweden.

Whether a legitimate parallel can be drawn with their approach regarding the pandemics, is another matter I'm not really commenting on here.

>Ehm, going back to that time to compare what is happening today? You do realize that this is Hitler times right? How was black people treated in USA at this time?

This may not be the best comparison to make if you want to argue that everything is fine now.

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