Human Experimentation Cases

Studies to discover the incidence of syphilis among poor black men in the south during the 1920's and 1930's turned into an experiment, The Tuskegee Experiment, to examine the effects of syphilis over time. Approximately 400 men were chosen for the study and received regular medical checkups to determine the progress of the diseases. The men were told that they had "bad blood" and were being treated for it. The men never received any actual treatment for the disease even after the discovery of a cure (penicillin).

At the University of Cincinnati patients who being treated for cancer were given massive doses of radiation. The Cincinnati Project told the patients that they were being treated for their cancer, when in fact the experiments were funded by the Military. The Military was interested in discovering how much radiation a person can absorb and still remain functional.

At Vanderbilt University in the late 1940's, eight hundred pregnant women were exposed to radiation to determine the effects of radiation on fetal development.

At the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, two hundred cancer patients were exposed to high levels of radiation. The experiments continued up until 1972 when the Atomic Energy Commission discontinued them on the grounds that there was little or no benefit to the patient.

In an Oregon State Prison the testicles of inmates were exposed to X rays to determine the effects of radiation on sperm production from 1963 to 1971. The inmates were never told that the exposure to massive doses of radiation can cause cancer.

During the late 1950's twelve terminally ill cancer patients at Columbia University and Montefiore Hospital were injected with radioactive calcium and strontium 85 to determine the absorption rate of radioactive substances into a variety of tissues and organs.

From 1946 to 1956 nineteen mentally retarded teenaged boys were fed radioactive iron and calcium in their breakfast cereal. The experiment took place at a state residential school in Fernald, Massachusetts. Parent's consent form contained no mention of radiation. The stated aim of the research was to gain information about metabolism.

Mentally retarded children housed at the Willowbrook State School in Staten Island, New York, were intentionally given hepatitis in an attempt to track the development of the viral infection. The study began in 1956 and lasted for 14 years.

In an attempt to compare the effectiveness of drug treatment to the effectiveness of surgical treatments for aggressive behavior sexual psychopaths were told that cranial electrodes were being implanted to learn more about the electrical activity in the brain when in fact the electrode implantation was followed by the surgical removal or destruction of parts of the brain thought to be involved in aggressive behavior.

The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment

The Radiation Exposure Experiments

The Willowbrook Hepatitis Experiments

The Detroit Psychosurgery Experiments

Discussion :

1. What kinds of people are involved as subjects in each experiment?

2. Was there any deception involved in the cases?

3. Is there any moral difference between the radiation experiments and experiments performed by Nazis physicians on Jews?

4. Is there any moral difference between the experiments performed on prison inmates and the experiments performed by Nazis physicians on Jews?

5. What is the moral problem raised by each of these experiments?

6. What theoretical grounds could be given to morally justify the experiments?

7. On what theoretical grounds are the experiments morally wrong?

8. What policies might be adopted to avoid these experiments?