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There is probably also some benefit to being willing to let some harm come to patients in order to quickly determine if treatments are viable or not. Western medicine puts a premium on human life but development of treatments is certainly slowed by that ethos .

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It puts a "premium" on life only because all those regulations were written with blood from those who can't defend themselves anymore as those same arguments were used back then as they are today.

Yes, obviously. Point still stands. There is benefit to the collective in sacrificing the few. It's abhorrent to western sensibilities but i bet the west would be happy to use the resulting research, just like previous times it has happened.

Western medicine has been lax on ethos and rigor in the past and we ended up exterminating and neutering large amounts of the population to 'keep the genetic heritage pure'. That is still a major traumatism that forces us to approach medicine with a very strong ethos.

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