There are a lot of people who consider retroactively applying our laws and feelings on people as we did at Nuremberg and calling it "crimes against humanity" patently unfair.
Name some.
Who are we to say what is or isn't a crime against humanity in another country?
We're human beings who aren't going to just sit by and watch human rights be violated on a daily basis without saying something. We're people with a sense of morality and fairness, and justice. Or at least, some of us are. The others are what we define as sociopaths. People incapable of empathy
Isn't that country a sovereign?
No. North Korea putting its citizens in concentration camps for folding the newspaper the wrong way such that the crease falls on the face of Dear Leader, is unethical. Their sovereignity is irrelevant. In fact, nations are artificial lines we've drawn on a planet that are arbitrary and ultimately meaningless. We are one species.
We can choose to place trade restrictions on them to influence them, or we can invade them to militarily impose our ethics on them, but that doesn't make what they did per se unethical.
No, what makes it unethical is that it is a violation of basic standards and guidelines which are followed for the purpose of best protecting the stakeholders involved.
Your layman's understanding of how ethics in the sciences works is the real issue here.
How do you handle human remains in archaeological excavations, Cad? Can you tell me? Well I'll tell you, if we can tie those remains back to any populations, be they Native, be they African American, be they White, etc. we
contact the stakeholders, and get their input before moving forward with the exacavation. This can stop an entire excavation for weeks or months. The teams of lawyers, legal counsel, federal, state and local governments, representatives for the communities/families/etc involved all get to come in and have their voices heard. Then a decision is made as a group.
The sciences are generally very well self regulated. Places like China are the wild west, but that doesn't make their conduct ethical, moral, or good, just because they are engaging in that research in a place with no accountability. In fact the lack of accountability is the
single best argument for why the research is unethical in the first place.
I'm still stuck at why you think ethics has mystical power. I think it's unethical that there's basically indentured servants making products in Asian countries for me, but fuck if I'm going to pay $25 for a plain t-shirt so I guess pragmatism wins out. Loomers gotta loom.
This is just a non sequitor strawman. No one thinks ethics is some magical power coming down to us from the sky. Our sense of morality, fairness and justice is a result of mutually beneficial positive selection for pro social behavior, actually.
