Argument paper
Flowers For Algernon
Charlie Gordons doctors did act ethically when they performed the surgery on Charlie to make him smarter. It may be true that in the process he lost his friends and his normal life, but he gets to understand the world and his own feelings more than ever and keeps that with him. Charlie gets a new start to life in a new city and place. The advantages of Charlie's operation outnumber the disadvantages.
March 4-8 (progress report #4)(keyes p.57), Charlie gets extremely excited about finding out that he's going to be used for the operation and that the only reason he agreed to this is because they said he would get smarter. So seeing this they have Charlie on board with the operation because Charlie had the option to decline the
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Strauss and dr. Nemur were following their own guidelines of right and wrong. They were doing this to help people and Charlie voluntarily chose to do this himself, and if they knew that the smarts wouldn’t be permanent they would have made further tests and fixed the formula and then test it on Charlie.
Because of the operation Charlie will die, he also lost who he thought were his friends and his job, but no one could have known about the fact that his friends weren't really his friends and his job was nothing compared to what would happen to him.because the effects weren't permanent he got his old job back and his old friends finally understood he was different and excepted him and started to take care of him as a friend.
Many people say that Charlies doctors didn’t act ethically and that they shouldn’t have gone threw with the surgery, however if it wasn’t for the surgery Charlie never would have learned the truth about his friends and science couldn’t have ever advanced to becoming closer to make the effects permanent and make the side effects
Respect for Subjects, as defined by the U.S government, is to “show respect to human subjects, researchers must continue to check the well-being of each subject as the study proceeds. Researchers should remove subjects from the study if it becomes too risky or harmful.” (Emanuel et al. p.7, ¶7-8). The means that the doctors must keep checking on the subjects and must be removed if it was dangerous. Charlie wasn’t removed from the experiment even though it becomes harmful to him. This is why the study violates the principle of Respect for Subjects, as it doesn’t benefit Charlie, making this experiment treacherous. “I have already begun to notice signs of emotional instability and forgetfulness, the first symptoms of the burnout.” (Keyes June 5, ¶8). Charlie is struggling and is getting worse by the day, and Dr. Strauss and Nemur are not taking any action into it. At the same time, these doctors are still keeping Charlie in the experiment even though he is at discomfort. Later on in the passage, Charlie is at distress. “Deterioration progressing. I have become absentminded.” (Keyes June 10, ¶1). Charlie symptoms are getting worse progressively just because he recieved the experiment. He is returning back to his original state. In the story, Fair Subject Selection was clearly not applied to the experiment as is didn’t follow the regulation. The main reason why this
The first reason why I think this is that the operation makes Charlie realize how mean his friends were and loses them, causing him to feel bad. For example, on page 209 it says, “It’s a funny thing I never knew that Joe and Frank and the others liked to have me around all the time to make fun of me,” and later Charlie says, “I’m ashamed,” which shows how realizing the truth about Joe and Frank makes him feel.
He was able to see the world through the new eyes that he had gained from the operation learning new things about the world and being able to talk and interact with the people around him as a normal person. For a moment in time Charlie was normal ,and even after he had lost everything Charlie still learns in the end that even though he may have lost everything he was still happy to be able to finally fulfill his dream of being normal. In conclusion I still think Charlie should have undergone the operation for these reasons ,because in the end if he hadn’t he would have experience these many great things and finally fulfilled his lifelong dream of becoming smart and
Before the operation, he exhibited some clear strengths such as determination, a positive attitude, friendly with people and some weaknesses such as education and inability to understand the adult world. After the operation, he begun to change in numerous ways. Charlie started out as being not really intelligent. Being around with “smart” people made him want to change and became “intelligent” just like his “friends.” I think its all crazy. If you can get smart when your sleeping why do people go to school. That thing I don't think will work. I use to watch the late show and the late late show on TV all the time and it never made me smart (Keyes 118). This part of the book led Charlie’s flashbacks takes place of how he was raised or nurtured through his childhood, Of how he wanted to try to become smart. However Dr. Strauss believes that his sleep would help Charlie be able to learn. However in his nature, his disability cannot help him at all, doesn’t matter how much he tries to watch TV and tries to go to sleep, I wouldn’t allow him to learn anything at all. The nurture of this is having the doctor recommend Charlie to do this. His disability also not just affects him but his family as well. His disability kind of makes his sister miserable as well, jealous over how the parents focus on Charlie due to his disability, despite the successes the sister achieves in school. Thus Charlie’s nature towards others has a negative effect which is towards his sister. Charlie was raised by his parents but through a condition that would then follow him probably for the rest of his life as well as being mainly raised through this experiment, which possibly wouldn’t help him at all in the near
With his simple minded approach to life, he was able to live happily without problems or difficulties that we face in relationships today. Although he was never smart, Charlie was a good person before the surgery.
The experiment starts to work and Charlie gets smarter and he starts realizing new things. Before the operation his imagination and his brain weren’t working that well. His imagination started to work for the first time when he got this operation. Now that he was smart, he could quit his old job of working as a janitor at a bakery and start working for the hospital full time.
They failed to see Charlie as a human being, not a test subject. They also weren't acting ethically when they chose Charlie as the test subject, when he was not mentally capable of making such a decision to say yes to the experiment. Although Charlie's doctors were unethical when they performed the experiment on Charlie, they were going into an unknown field of study where no known procedures were in place with patient interaction and concern. All in all, Charlie Gordans' doctors did not act ethically when they performed the experimental surgery to improve his intelligence.
This, Charlie thought, would make him have more friends and a better life; he thought he would be able to have conversations about topics he was not able to understand before. Although the operation raised his intelligence levels, as mentioned before, his personality worsened and happiness decreased. As a result of this, Charlie realized that his friends were disrespecting him. “I never knew before that Joe and Frank and the others liked to have me around just to make fun of me.” (Keyes 42). When Charlie’s intelligence increased, he was smart enough to figure out that the people he once called his friends did not actually treat him as a friend. Charlie experienced this sorrow because of the intelligence that was manufactured into him, causing the opposite of what he expected to
For Charlie, Ignorance is bliss. He realizes that his so called ? friends? were just using him to entertain their perverse humor. Also, he was also fired from the job that he loved so much because his new intelligence made those around him feel inferior and scared.
Charlie got to see and help people who were the way he was before AI. For instance when Charlie was more optimistic than ever, he defended a mentally handicapped boy. ¨They were
One of the many reasons Dr. Strauss and Dr. Nemur should not have chosen Charlie Gordon is because he was still an outcast, even though the Doctors gave him the reality that he would not be. “They’ve Driven me out of the factory. Now I’m more alone than ever before. . . .” (Keyes, 199). When he got smarter they disliked him even more,
A person's ethics are his or her standards of what is right, wrong, and just in terms of obligation, fairness, rights, and specific values. In the story "Flowers for Algernon" Charlie Gordon, the narrator of the story, has an extremely low IQ and longs to be smart. "I hope they use me. Miss Kinnian says maybe they can make me smart. I want to be smart" (Keyes, page 53). Charlie is hoping to be selected for an experimental program recommended by his night school teacher in which he and a white mouse named Algernon will undergo a surgery that supposedly makes them smarter. Charlie knows of only one outcome of the operation – getting smarter; he does not know it will affect him in
After the A.I surgery, Charlie found out what true friends are. Before the surgery, Charlie was always being pushed around by his
He was happy, optimistic, and very nice to others. He was thrilled to have the operation to make him smarter, so, in a progress report, he wrote, “Their (they’re) going to use me! I’m so excited I can hardly write.” This demonstrates how ecstatic Charlie was for his surgery, and how he was like this in many other aspects of his life. The surgery, however, had resulted in many changes in his life, including his emotional state. He often felt upset and became easily agitated. After the surgery, he says, “I can feel the darkness closing in. It’s hard to throw off thoughts of suicide.” (Keyes 302) The way he feels about his life and himself had changed drastically
Before Charlie had the operation preformed on him, he had friends at the bakery he worked at. They were not really his friends because they always made jokes about Charlie, but he was not smart enough to realize it. As he gets smarter he loses his friends because they think he is just trying to act smart.