Medical Research, Consent and Ethics

Medical progress has sometimes come at the expense of people who were not asked or not told. After the Second World War, the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial judged Nazi physicians who had conducted experiments on concentration camp prisoners, and its 1947 judgment set out the Nuremberg Code, beginning with the principle that voluntary consent is essential.

Abuses also occurred in democracies. In the US Public Health Service's Tuskegee study (1932–1972), Black men with syphilis were observed but not properly informed or treated, even after penicillin became standard; the study ended after press exposure in 1972, and a presidential apology followed in 1997.

In 1951 cells taken from Henrietta Lacks without her knowledge became the HeLa line used worldwide. The Declaration of Helsinki (1964) and the US Belmont Report (1979) established principles of respect, beneficence and justice. These cases show that ethics must evolve alongside medical technology.