Ethics and Human Experimentation

TWENTY-ONE years ago, in June 1966, Henry Beecher, Dorr Professor of Research in Anesthesia at Harvard Medical School, published in these pages an analysis of "Ethics and Clinical Research" and thereby accelerated the movement that brought human experimentation under rigorous federal and institutional control.1 Although Beecher was not the first to direct attention to abuses in human experimentation, and the National Institutes of Health was already formulating stricter rules, his presentation of 22 examples of investigators who endangered "the health or the life of their subjects" without informing them of the risks or obtaining their permission was a critical element . . .