Bioethics in Popular Media: Naruto
Orochimaru is not a good person!!!
Naruto is one of the most influential pieces of media ever created. It is an adaptation of the manga of the same by Masashi Kishimoto. It ran for more than 700 episodes and its sequel boruto is currently airing. The story follows Naruto, an orphan who despite being despised by his entire village wants to become the Hokage and be respected by everyone.
In this article, I want to talk about one of the most iconic naruto villains: Orochimaru who is known for his multiple forbidden techniques, immortality, and his disgustingly long snake tongue. Everything about him screams creepy, from his pale appearance, his voice, and even his theme song. However, one of his more horrible sides is sometimes forgotten-his inhumane experiment. And I want to explore that — what are the bioethics of naruto?
A short history of Orochimaru
Orochimaru was a talented child, a genius almost with how he advanced in the ninja world. He was also very interested in science and by the time he reached in late teens, and early twenties, he was already experimenting, trying to learn beyond the world he knew. However, his experiment went too far and he was banished from the village at some point.
He created his own village full of orphans and prisoners of war. Some he kept as disciples, others he imprisoned and most of them he used as test subjects promising them power.
Without giving away too many spoilers, he created havoc in his hometown, persecuted our main character for a while, and around the end of the show, helped the “good” guys by providing strong ninjas. Because of that, and the general stupidity of the leader, he was forgiven and allowed to continue ruling over his village and his experiments. The only punishment was house arrest and being surveilled by someone he could easily beat. But we don’t talk about that enough for my taste.
Bioethics — overview
Given the long list of sins of Orochimaru, we can seriously encompass dozens of bioethical issues related to this villain but I will only mention a few. We can start with stem cell research (with the Hashirama cells), genetics ethics, reproductions ethics, and the biggest one — research ethics.
Bioethics — explained
Research ethics is the part of bioethics that governs the standards of conduct for scientific researchers (WHO). Some of the principles related to this part of bioethics are — respect for persons, beneficence, and justice given the history of abuse among researchers.
Orochimaru went against all these principles while conducting his research. From the onset, he selected vulnerable people who were fleeing wars and famine, and genocide only to offer them power through his experiments without informing them of the potential risks.
Those were the lucky ones, for others, they were simply used for gruesome research in genetics and cloning and the development of new techniques. They are completely used up with absolutely no consideration as shown in this manga panel.
Despite all of this, one of the scariest things about Orochimaru is that he got away with this. Everyone recognized that his experiments were harmful, inhumane, and even forbidden but no one stopped him. He was left to continue his work without regulations because he had helped in the war. And this attitude is extremely dangerous.
Real-life implications
One might ask, what’s wrong with letting researchers work in peace? After all, they create life-saving medicine or innovation in biomedical tech that ends up helping everyone. Well, historically, we have seen that even scientists are not immune to abuse and their material conditions.
In Japan, we had unit 731, a biomedical experiment team that conducted gruesome research on civilians and prisoners of war to perfect biological warfare weapons in their fight against China during WWII. After all the atrocities these scientists committed, the ones that survived were allowed to continue thriving in society and even become celebrated members of the scientific community just like Orochimaru (Williams, 1989)
In Germany, we had human experiments on Jewish people and other minorities as seen in every book and movie about the holocaust. What is not known is that those Nazi scientists were then recruited by western countries such as France, England, and the US (with operation paperclip); they would become celebrated scientists, and their crimes were erased or hidden from popular memory (Lichtblau,2010).
In colonial Africa, the Caribbean, and even Latin America, the history of human experiments has been completely erased as western scientists continue to do their work and are admired as beacons of progress.
What this tells us is when we ignore the crimes of scientists even brilliant ones, we are telling the world that some people matter more than others; that the advancement of humanity has to come before justice for those whose bodies were exploited, that some people are just meant to be collateral damages.
Although the laws on research ethics have advanced, there is still a long way to go.
References
Lichtblau, E. (2010, November 16). Nazis Were Given ‘Safe Haven’ in U.S., Report Says. The New York Times. Retrieved May 17, 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/us/14nazis.html
Rogers, Kara. “Guatemala syphilis experiment”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 18 Mar. 2018, https://www.britannica.com/event/Guatemala-syphilis-experiment. Accessed 17 May 2022.
Schiebinger, Londa. “Secret Cures of Slaves.” Secret Cures of Slaves. Stanford University Press, 2017.
Tilley, Helen. “Medicine, empires, and ethics in colonial Africa.” AMA Journal of Ethics 18.7 (2016): 743–753.
World Health Organization. (n.d.). Ensuring ethical standards and procedures for research with human beings. World Health Organization. Retrieved May 17, 2022, from https://www.who.int/activities/ensuring-ethical-standards-and-procedures-for-research-with-human-beings#:~:text=Research%20ethics%20govern%20the%20standards,and%20welfare%20of%20research%20participants
Williams, Peter, and David Wallace. Unit 731: Japan’s secret biological warfare in World War II. New York: Free Press, 1989.
