Experimentation on human beings: a history, and discussion of current regulations (original) (raw)
Related papers
Medical experiments on human beings
Journal of Medical Ethics, 1981
Throughout the scientific age it has been increasingly realised that the path to knowledge is through carefully-controlled experimentation. Medicine must never, however, treat human beings as objects, or as the means to achieving increased knowledge. Ultimately the goal of human evolution will be served by the willing collaboration of members of society in the advancement of knowledge through carefully planned experimentation. As of now, however, many safeguards must be built into the system to ensure that no exploitation occurs. Experimenters are charged with the task of designing the most ingenious experiments, to give maximum information with a minimum of trauma and always to ensure the fully informed consent of the participants. This paper was read to a conference on human rights in relation to forensic science organised by Centro Internazionale di Richerche e Studi Penale e Penitanziari, in cooperation with UNESCO, held in Messina, Italy, in March I980. Ever since I began my medical studies-more years ago than I care to rememberand throughout my career as a physician, experimental researcher
Bioethics, 1995
Relatively subtle forms of exploitation of human subjects may arise from the inefficiency or incompetence of a researcher, from the existence of a power imbalance between principal and subject, or from the uneven distribution of research risks among various segments of the population. A powerful and knowledgeable person (or institution) may perpetrate the exploitation of an unempowered and ignorant individual even without intending to. There is an ethical burden on the former to protect the interests of the vulnerable. Excessive or insufficient compensation may be exploitative. However, genuine economic imperatives motivating needy volunteers have to be considered. These forms of exploitation should be appreciated in the context of social and cultural factors suggesting that the relationship between researcher and subject cannot properly be appraised as a contractual undertaking. While compliance with pertinent codes and regulations minimises the exploitative potential, they cannot be enforced in a way that does not recognise a society's peculiar characteristics. The experience with some Filipino cultural traits illustrates this point.
Ethics and human experimentation
Physicians have conducted research on syphilis for centuries, seeking to understand its etiology and the means of transmission as well as find ways to prevent and cure the disease. Their research practices often strayed from today's ethical standards. In this paper we review ethical aspects of the long history of research on syphilis with emphasis on the experiments performed in the 20th century. The description of research around the time of World War II covers medical experiments carried out in US prisons and in the experimentation centers established by Japanese doctors in occupied territory, as well as experiments in Nazi Germany and the treatment of syphilitics there.
One-day conference "Experimentation on humans: science, history, politics, ethics and ideologies", at The Jacques Loeb Centre for the History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel (May 31, 2016).
Twenty First Century Books, 2014
A historical account of a controversial topic, For the Good of Mankind? traces accounts of human experimentation and the people responsible. The book outlines that, starting as early as the 18th Century, U.S. doctors experimented on children, slaves, and the mentally ill in order to advance and protect the human race from diseases like Smallpox, Yellow fever, and Malaria. Their experiments often raised questions about the ethics involved, especially after Nazi doctors where convicted after the end of World War II of experimenting on thousands of individuals without consent, often under the same pretenses of discovering new cures and treatments. Even after the war ended, the advent of nuclear weapons prompted doctors to search for cures to radiation sickness and fallout at the expense of unwilling human research participants, even to the point of giving the test subjects radioactive shots and releasing radioactive particles into the air they breathed. Recent events, however, have changed the way that humans participate in medical trials and have shifted the public’s attitude towards how cures and vaccines are obtained. The book concludes with a warning: Today we are still susceptible to practicing unethical human experimentation and it is up to us as individuals to determine whether or no the price of progress is right, or if we need to help change the way we seek for the good of mankind. For the Good of Maknind? is an acceptable beginners foray into the ethics of the medical advancement and experimentation. Written in an academic style, it attempts to portray questions of morality and ethics alongside specific examples of humans breaking those same norms for the “greater good,” and seeks to help people make their own decisions as to how medical research should be conducted.
Foreign Bodies: The New Victims of Unethical Experimentation
Abstract: Despite a number of beneficent outcomes, clinical trials on human subjects have exposed some of the worst forms of state crime, most notably in Nazi Germany. Even with the subsequent establishment of guidelines for the protection of human subjects, such as the Nuremberg Code, clinical trials resulting in death and injury is a continuing feature of medical research, especially as Western states outsource more trials to the private sector where profit margins often trump personal safety. Focusing on the clinical trials business in India, the article argues that the exploitation of human subjects in developing countries, affecting as it does the most vulnerable groups, must be understood as a form of state-corporate crime. In this way, the moral distance we prefer to place between Nazi medical crimes and those committed in the interests of neoliberal values becomes less viable and the need for effective responses to unethical clinical trials more pressing. Keywords: state-corporate harm; unethical trials; India; vulnerable populations
Historical and Philosophical Perspectives on Experimental Practice in Medicine and the Life Sciences
Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, 2005
The aim of this paper is to discuss a key question in the history and philosophy of medicine, namely how scholars should treat the practices and experimental hypotheses of modern life science laboratories. The paper seeks to introduce some prominent historiographical methods and theoretical approaches associated with biomedical research. Although medical scientists need no convincing that experimentation has a significant function in their laboratory work, historians, philosophers, and sociologists long neglected its importance when examining changes in medical theories or progress in scientific knowledge. The reason appears to have been the academic influence of the then dominant tradition in the history of ideas, but was also due to a misconception of what could usefully be termed the view on "historical ontology." During the last two decades, there have been many books and research articles that have turned towards the subject, so that the study of experimental practice has become a major trend in the contemporary history and philosophy of medicine. A closer look at the issue of laboratory research shows that concepts in medicine and the life sciences cannot be understood as historically constant, free-standing ideas, but have to be regarded as dependent on local research settings. They often carry particular "social memories" with them and thus acquire important ethical implications.