A Dangerous Master by Wendell Wallach

Author:Wendell Wallach [Wallach, Wendell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780465040537
Publisher: Basic Books

RESEARCH ETHICS

Research ethics will play a crucial role in the development of technologies that enhance human capabilities. The protections in place to oversee the ethical treatment of human subjects create barriers to studies that are dangerous, unwarranted, or bad science. Research subjects have the right to be informed about the risks before they give consent to be included in a study. These rights are relatively new in the annals of scientific investigation and are still being revised.

Horrific experiments by Nazi doctors on prisoners in concentration camps resulted in the death or disfigurement of countless unwilling subjects. Experiments on slaves, prisoners, the mentally ill, or ethnic groups deemed “undesirable” were nothing new, and yet the scale of Nazi experimentation shocked those following the post-World War II Nuremberg Trials. A few of the doctors pleaded in their own defense that they should be treated leniently due to an absence of international laws limiting medical experimentation. Subsequently, guidelines known as the Nuremberg Code were formulated to outline permissible practices when experimenting on human subjects. The Code calls for voluntary consent from subjects and avoidance of unnecessary pain or suffering. While an important first step, the Nuremberg Code failed to be transformed into international law or adopted legally by individual countries.

The Nuremberg Code also failed to prevent further egregious experiments on human subjects. The notorious Tuskegee experiment, in which the progress of syphilis was followed in 399 poor black men, began in 1932, and continued after the war until 1972. The experiment is especially controversial because penicillin was recognized as an effective cure for the disease in the 1940s, but subjects in the study were never given treatment. The Tuskegee study is also deplorable in that it was conducted under the auspices of the U.S. Public Health Services. Even more horrendous were syphilis experiments conducted by the same health services in Guatemala from 1946-1948. Soldiers, prostitutes, patients in mental hospitals, and prisoners were injected with syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases, leading to eighty-three deaths.

In 1966, anesthesiologist Henry Beecher published an article in the eminent New England Journal of Medicine citing twenty-two unethical experiments with human subjects that had been performed in the U.S. in the years following the Nuremberg Trials. Beecher kept the researchers’ names anonymous, but later investigations revealed the experiments had been conducted in mainstream institutions and the results were published in leading journals. Among the examples described by Beecher was the introduction of live cancer cells into subjects who were never informed that the cells were cancerous. Building upon the Nuremberg Code, the Beecher article created impetus for the eventual enactment of laws and professional guidelines detailing acceptable practices. Neither the Tuskegee nor Guatemala syphilis studies were mentioned in the Beecher report, because they only came to light in 1972 and 2005, respectively.

Over the past half-century, thanks to the Beecher article and revelations about the Tuskegee experiment and similarly horrific research, regulations and oversight agencies, to ensure the rights of research subjects, have been developed in many countries around the globe.

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