The Pros And Cons Of Human Experimentation

"Curiosity killed the cat but satisfaction brought it back." The human desire to know and manipulate the unknown is usually lauded—that is, until something terrible happens. Human experimentation achieved its height of international popularity during the World War II Nazi Nuremberg Doctors' Trials. The response to these atrocities forced world leaders to take action but also raised many questions, mostly concerning what limits humans have to unnaturally manipulate members of their own species. Human experimentation has numerous avenues to benefit mankind, but until lines are clearly drawn, man will continue to exploit human livelihood for the sake of research. Human experimentation leaves members of the medical field guessing about the appropriate

Doctors sometimes told subjects that they were testing for one illness when in reality they were testing for another. Technically, the subject knew the truth, but not the whole truth. Other scenarios included mentally disabled or child subjects, people judged not to have a full grasp of what was happening. Did this still qualify as consent? Before explicit consent guidelines existed, many healthcare professionals never bothered getting consent from their subjects, as seen in 1941 when Dr. William C. Black inoculated a twelve-month old baby with herpes and then attempted to publish his research in The Journal of Experimental Medicine. Although his findings were rejected for unethical reasons, the subsequent actions taken still did not define consent of the subject. The first largely successful solution to specify consent came in with the Common Rule, a code of ethics enacted in 1981 following the Declaration of Helsinki. Derived from other codes of ethics like the Nuremberg Codes, this document gives explicit guidelines to IRBs regarding both kinds of human experimentation, funded or not funded by the government. Understanding the mutability of the medical field, the initial drafters of the Common Rule insisted on international amending assemblies in order to make revisions, the most recent one being in 2013 in Fortaleza, Brazil. Under Section 46.117 titled General Requirements for Informed Consent, the internationally-accepted definition lawful consent of the subject is "a written consent form approved by the IRB and signed by the subject or the subject's legally authorized representative" (Department of Health and Human Services 8). The document goes on to explain the requirements of a written consent form, including "duration of the experiment", "description of any foreseeable risks", "a statement that the study involves the research to be