History of Research Involving Human Subjects

History of Research Involving Human Subjects

When it comes to involving human subjects for research purposes, you would think that being ethical was automatic, a natural instinct. Unfortunately, throughout history of research that was not the case. Whether the researcher was ignorant or oblivious, many people were victims to these unethical practices. Regulations derive from unfortunate events. The moment, a harmful or dangerous incident occurs, is when laws and regulations are established to prevent it from happening again.

One of the most popular unethical practices has been the Tuskegee experiment. In order to learn about syphilis, studies were done without a consent. None of the human subjects even knew they were being experimented on. They all believed that they were receiving care for “bad blood,” when in fact they had been injected with the disease. Treatment was available at the time but was held back on purpose to see the effects syphilis had on people. This horrific study, fortunately, led to establishing the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subject of Biomedical and Behavioral Research in 1979.

Another unethical practice was the Bellevue electroshock experiment. Even though, with parental consent, children feared of this treatment. Dr. Lauretta Bender, however was very convincing when she promised electroshock therapy to be the solution in treating autism and schizophrenia. This went on for 29 years where she experimented on 200 children from as little as three years of age. The after-affects were seriously disappointing. One child went from being timid to absolutely outraged and aggressive. Another child went from mild to being catatonic. Instead of helping her patients, electroshock therapy ended up damaging brain cells, causing memory loss. Some of her victims resulted to taking their own lives before going through another session of “treatment.” To this day, electroconvulsive