unethical human experimentation

Has unethical human experimentation occurred in recent history?

Many examples of unethical and even inhumane human experimentation have occurred over the past two centuries, in the United States and elsewhere:

In the mid 1800s, J. Marion Sims, considered the father of gynecology, developed his surgical methods by performing experimental surgeries on African slaves who had not been anesthetized.

In 1906, the United States performed cholera experiments on prisoners in the Philippines.

In 1908, doctors in Philadelphia carried out a study that involved purposely infecting orphans with tuberculosis.

In 1915, many poor and orphaned Mississippi children were used in pellagra experiments.

In the four decades after 1932, almost 400 African-American men in Tuskegee, Ala. were left untreated for syphilis by the U.S. Public Health Service -- despite penicillin becoming the standard remedy in 1947 Chadwick.

In 1946, doctors from the U.S. began a two-year project of attempting to infect Guatemalan soldiers, mental patients and prison inmates with syphilis; if infected, they were treated McNeil.

In 1955, hepatitis studies involving disabled children began at Staten Island's Willowbrook State School; they included deliberate infection of test subjects.

Prior to the 1970s, approximately 90 percent of pharmaceutical testing was performed on prisoners. Some of the worst examples of using prisoners in human experimentation were perpetrated during World War II by the Nazis and the infamous Japanese Military Unit 731.

In the 1930s, the U. S. Food and Drug Administration began requiring stricter tests for new drugs. This led to an increase in human clinical trials. As a result, in 1966, the National Institutes of Health or NIH had developed the NIH Policy for Protection of Research Subjects. This policy required the implementation of institutional review boards (IRBs) to monitor the involvement of human subjects in testing and experimentation. All U.S. universities and colleges involved in any form of human experimentation must have IRBs. Since the successful integration of the NIH policy, the President's National Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research has placed a greater emphasis on refining laws related to human experimentation.