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Originally Posted by Catwoman
At the time, American military scientists emphasised the 'extreme value' of the intelligence gained, saying "The value to the US of Japanese biological warefare data is of such importance to national security as to far outweigh the value accruing from 'war crime' persecution."
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That is horrific. And it raises huge ethical issues. Do you use data that comes from a horribly tainted source like that?
I'm reminded of the medical experimentation the Nazis did on some of their prisoners. Some of the data from those experiments has actually been valuable. Prisoners were put in tubs of ice cold water to see how long they would last, and if they could be revived afterwards. Much of what we know about the effects of cold water exposure comes from that data. Many people died to get that data. Do you throw the data away, or use it?
The difference, of course, is the Nazis were tried for war crimes, and the Japanese haven't faced the music for what they did.