The Atlantis Gene

While the process of medical research inevitably includes human trials, those trials normally come in the later stages of the process, after the treatment has been widely tested on rats, mice, or primates similar to humans. Researchers strive to make clinical trials as safe as possible before entering the final phase of testing. For Dorian Sloane, however, such safety protocols are little more than an inconvenience. He haphazardly throws human bodies into the Bell testing facility with no consideration for safety. When a group of test subjects hemorrhage en masse, the bodies are loaded onto train cars to make way for the next group. While The Atlantis Gene exaggerates these scenes for narrative effect, it does question the ethics of such testing. Researchers would argue that human trials are necessary to bring life-saving drugs to market, and that by the time testing reaches Phase 3 human trials, as many dangerous side effects as possible have been eliminated. It is certainly true that many therapies—including the game-changing smallpox vaccine—have been vital in improving global health outcomes. It is also true that the majority of drugs brought to clinical trials never make it to the market. Testing on mice is widespread, but, according to Harvard University, “we are not mice, and most of these cures fail miserably in humans” (Zimmerman, S.