Ethics in human experimentation: historical perspectives

Ethics has received renewed attention recently as evidenced by recent revelations of experimentation on Eskimos during the 1950s and a new President vowing to raise ethical standards of conduct within government. There is also an ongoing, intense scrutiny of past radiation-exposure experiments with all of its possible ethical violations. This paper is a modest attempt to familiarize the reader with some of the historical development of ethics in human-use research. Debate concerning the use of humans as subjects of medical and behavioral experimentation has a long and distinguished history going back at least 2,000 years. A short historical review reveals that ethical behavior exhibits a pendulum action between the extremes of protection of humans at all costs and the attainment of scientific knowledge at all costs. Only by knowing the historical foundation of ethics can one understand the current issues surrounding human experimentation.