Daniel Carrión's Experiment

IN the continuing debate that envelops the practice of human experimentation, many classic examples of physician self-experimentation are cited by modern authors to dramatize their opinions. Purkinje's dosing himself with sufficient digitalis to kill nine cats to induce teichopsia, the death of Obermeier from self-inoculated cholera (after he failed to give himself relapsing fever) and the deaths of Lazear and ultimately Carroll in the now famous yellow-fever experiments are but a few of the cases used to illustrate either the folly or the exalted beneficence of their perpetrators.In the present age of corporate medical endeavor, when studies involving human . . .