At a hospital, late one night, a physician discovers that one of her patients is missing, and likely has passed away, as he was not expected to survive the night. The physician tracks the body to a nearby medical school, where students are in the midst of an illicit experiment. The physician faces an ethical dilemma that puts her clinical judgment up against the amoral ambition of the chair of the graduate school of neuroscience. Even if the doctor can save her patient, what about the next one? And the one after that? At what point should human compassion outweigh research science and “the need to know”?
