Genie, the case of the wild girl
The 4 of November of 1970, the social services of the city of Los Angeles discovered a girl of thirteen years in half-wild state, a creature incapable to speak after to have passed their life locked up in a room in the dark and subhuman conditions. According to they described the witnesses, in that one room was more a chair-orinal, some slow units of the TV magazine and no the cage of wire in which to his she locked up it father to sleep every night.
During those thirteen years of life, the small Genie, as they baptized the investigators later, had had prohibited to speak or to emit sound some. His father struck to him wildly or he barked to him like a dog if it were happened to him to make some noise. Besides maintaining it isolated of the rest of the family, that one man did not provide another food to him that not outside eaten for baby or cooked eggs. The cockpit where she remained shut in, with the sealed windows, as soon as it allowed to see five centimeters him of sky.
When the psychologists examined the girl, they discovered that he walked with difficulty and he behaved like a wild creature: escupía, scratched or tried to masturbar itself compulsively. The girl had a vocabulary of twenty words, in her majority orders like “she stops! ”, “not” or “no longer more”.
Nevertheless, and although it was transferred immediately to a hospital of Los Angeles, the nightmare of the small Genie not yet had finished. Animated by the opening of the film “the small savage” of Truffaut, several investigators were interested in their case and believed to see in her an opportunity to advance in their studies on the language and the human brain.
During long Genie months it was put under tens of tests, with a value more experimental than therapeutic, while the investigators fought themselves to see who remained with its case. Doctor Jeanne Butler, in particular, was conceited of which that one case was going to make famous and ended up taking him to the girl to its own house, it recorded where it during hours while it realised with her all type of tests of doubtful scientific value.
After that one situation, another pair of scientists, the Rigler marriage, became position of Genie and followed with the experiments. Although there were some progresses, the tests included contradictory activities for the girl, like forcing to him to remember what his father made or allow him that the face was scratched as forms to express its rage. After verifying the irregularities, and the absence of a scientific plan, the Association of Mental Health of the United States retired the economic support to the investigation and the Rigler lost the interest by the girl.
In case the confusion was small, a court gave back the safekeeping to the mother, who interposed a demand against all the equipment of investigation and “the excessive and unbearable” infantile hospital of Los Angeles it to have put under tests. Finally, the mother was not able to take care of of Genie and the girl happened through other six adoptive homes, in some of which she returned to undergo bad treatments that took to deep regressions.
Nowadays only we know that, to be alive, Genie is entered in some mental institution after a miserable life and without to have surpassed no of its problems.
Besides the questions that raise, the behavior of the scientists in the case of pres-date us to Genie to other situations in which the limits of the investigation are not absolutely clear. In 1822, for example, doctor William Beaumont became position of a patient hurt during a hunting to which the firings had left a hole in the stomach. During the following twenty years, the doctor put all type of excuses not to close the wound and to continue experimenting with that one man, whom he introduced foods with a cuerdecita to see the effect of the gastric juice.
The investigations of Beaumont with that one “human coberry” served to advance of very significant way in the knowledge of the digestion and helped to save the life of many people. Similarly, in the case of Genie, the controverted experiments of the psychologists served to know something more on the cerebral origin of the language and functions.
Saving the distances, and beyond the good or bad will of the investigators, in both cases somebody gave priority to the result of an investigation in front of the good of the patient and in both cases he is legitimate to become the same disquieting question: They had right to do it?
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brigida!