Unethical human experimentation
Such practices have included denying patients the right to informed consent, using pseudoscientific frameworks such as race science, and torturing people under the guise of research.
Examples include American abuses during Project MKUltra and the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, and the mistreatment of indigenous populations in Canada and Australia.
The Declaration of Helsinki, developed by the World Medical Association (WMA), is widely regarded as the cornerstone document on human research ethics.
Typically, the experiments resulted in death, trauma, illness, shortening of life, disfigurement, or permanent disability, and as such are considered as examples of medical torture since the participants had to endure mass amounts of pain.
[6] During the Nuremberg Trials, 23 Nazi doctors and scientists were tried for the unethical treatment of concentration camp inmates, who were often used as research subjects with fatal consequences.
[7] The Law for the Prevention of Genetically Defective Progeny, passed on 14 July 1933, legalized the involuntary sterilization of persons with diseases claimed to be hereditary: weak-mindedness, schizophrenia, alcohol abuse, insanity, blindness, deafness, and physical deformities.
[11] Intravenous injections of solutions speculated to contain iodine and silver nitrate were successful, but had unwanted side effects such as vaginal bleeding, severe abdominal pain, and cervical cancer.
[15][16] These were conducted for the Nazi high command to simulate the conditions the armies suffered on the Eastern Front, as the German forces were ill-prepared for the cold weather they encountered.
[18] In early 1942, prisoners at Dachau concentration camp were used by Sigmund Rascher in experiments to aid German pilots who had to eject at high altitudes.
In an often-cited review of the Dachau hypothermia experiments, Berger states that the study has "all the ingredients of a scientific fraud" and that the data "cannot advance science or save human lives.
Unit 731, a department of the Imperial Japanese Army located near Harbin (then in the puppet state of Manchukuo, in northeast China), experimented on prisoners by conducting vivisections, dismemberments, and bacterial inoculations.
In November 2006, Doctor Akira Makino confessed to Kyodo news that he had performed surgery and amputations on condemned prisoners, including women and children, in 1944 and 1945 while he was stationed on Mindanao.
[31][32][33][34][35] In 2007, Doctor Ken Yuasa testified to The Japan Times and said that he believes that at least 1,000 persons working for the Shōwa regime, including surgeons, conducted surgical research in mainland China.
[37] In 1958, a large number of infants were brought to Kobe Medical School and forcibly administered sugar by having needles inserted through their noses and into their stomachs.
In 2002, the vice chancellor of the university described the experiments as "degrading and in some cases barbarous" and the school issued a formal apology to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander groups.
During the course of the trial, in both the control and treatment groups nearly a fifth "died from diseases of poverty, gastroenteritis and pneumonia, as a result of the lethal living conditions on the reserves."
The experiments were run by the Department of Indian Affairs of Canada and directed by Percy Moore and Frederick Tisdall, a former president of the Canadian Paediatric Society.
[52] De-classified documents from The National Archives revealed that during the 20th century, scientists from Porton Down conducted experiments on British and Indian soldiers to test the effects of mustard gas.
[55][56] Between 1940 and 1979, the Ministry of Defence secretly dispersed potentially dangerous chemicals and micro-organisms across much of the country to evaluate readiness against a biological attack from the Soviet Union.
In reaction to this, interest groups and institutions have worked to design policies and oversight to ensure that future human subject research in the United States would be ethical and legal.
It was tasked with establishing the boundary between research and routine practice, the role of risk-benefit analysis, guidelines for participation, and the definition of informed consent.
Experiments on humans were intended to identify and develop drugs and procedures to be used in interrogations and torture, in order to weaken the individual to force confessions through mind control.
[65]: 74 [68][69][70] MKUltra used numerous methodologies to manipulate people's mental states and alter brain functions, including the surreptitious administration of drugs (especially LSD) and other chemicals, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, as well as various forms of torture.
Though identities of the authors and institutions had been stripped, the 22 studies were later identified as having been conducted by mainstream researchers and published in prestigious journals within approximately the previous decade.
"[75] The United States Office for Human Research Protections credits Beecher through this paper as "ultimately contributing to the impetus for the first NIH and FDA regulations.
He noted that a common element in these studies was that some experimental subjects, such as military personnel or mentally handicapped children in institutions, were not in a position to freely decline consent.
He worked both to define the rules and conditions for informed consent, and to establish institutional review boards as an additional layer of oversight regarding research protocols.
[78] A 1996 clinical trial in Kano, Nigeria, involving the Pfizer drug Trovan to treat meningitis resulted in 200 children being disabled and the deaths of 11.
[81] With funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the program tested over 17,000 Zimbabwean women for the efficacy of AZT in preventing transmission of HIV/AIDS during childbirth.
According to Peter Lamptey, the head of the AIDS Control and Prevention Program, "if you interviewed the people in the study, most wouldn't understand to what they had actually consented.
