Clinical trials on trial
By Osagie Obasogie,
The New Scientist
| 01. 22. 2011
[Commentary]
A great deal of scientific research – especially in medicine – relies on human subjects. Protecting volunteers has been a prominent social and legal issue since the 1950s, when the world recoiled from the horrors of Nazi medicine.
We have come a long way since then, but it pays to remember that the Nazis did not have a monopoly on atrocities committed in the name of science. One of the worst cases of human subject abuse was perpetrated by American scientists who, between 1932 and 1972, misled hundreds of black people with syphilis in Tuskegee, Alabama, by deliberately leaving them untreated to enable researchers to study the progression of the disease.
To view the entire article, please click below for version in PDF format.
Related Articles
By Anna Louie Sussman, The New York Times | 03.25.2025
On June 24, 2022, the same day the Supreme Court issued its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, I received a call from the fertility clinic where I’d been undergoing in vitro fertilization, informing me that seven of...
By Staff, The Medicine Maker | 03.21.2025
"The Promise and Peril of CRISPR" cover by Johns Hopkins University Press
As a paediatrician taking care of children with sickle cell disease, Neal Baer, a Harvard Medical School graduate, was in awe of the power of CRISPR technologies. Later...
By Jason Green, The Mercury News | 03.24.2025
With genetic testing company 23andMe facing an increasingly uncertain future, California Attorney General Rob Bonta on Friday reminded customers they have the right to tell the firm to permanently delete their data.
The South San Francisco-based company has publicly...
By ACLU Northern California
| 03.21.2025
In a long-standing lawsuit, the ACLU, on behalf of partner organizations and an individual taxpayer, is challenging the state of California for its retention of genetic samples and profiles from people arrested but never convicted of a felony.
The complaint...
