In Moonwalking with Einstein, Foer claims that Henry Molaison, a man who had his hippocampus removed, could only remember memories and thoughts like names, dates, times, and even sometimes questioned if he ate breakfast or not for a short period of time before they disappeared from his brain. Henry’s life went on to be one of the most groundbreaking scientific studies in Neuroscience this world has ever seen. However, there is an ethical issue to the original surgery to remove his hippocampus, even though the surgery was necessary to prolong Henry Molaison’s life, and to keep him from having multiple epileptic seizures.
This surgery was in fact a success and stopped his seizures, but it came with a price, the first price he paid was with his memory. Henry Molaison, also spent countless hours of his life being experimented on, studied, monitored, and paid the price of not being able to live a normal life. This raises a question about the ethics of putting a human being under a scientist’s microscope twenty-four hours a day seven days a week. The surgery Henry Molaison underwent to prolong his life by removing his…show more content… in helping me figure out if this surgery is ethical is that Foer explained the progression of the life of Henry Molaison in the eyes of science. Where the second article, by Jenni Ogden PH.D. showed the progression of the life of Henry Molaison in the eyes of a human being. Foer also focused his attention on what Henry accomplished without the hippocampus and what he also accomplished along the way with the doctors who had been doing studies of him. It also went into depth of how his brain reacted with new experiments. The second article focused more on the ethics of his situation. Henry did not only lose his job but he also lost every memory that he had prior to the operation. Friendly faces became strangers and dates and times became a struggle to keep track
