Talk:Unethical human experimentation in the United States/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

The article only rarely contains information about the test results

It's a very interesting article that lists all kinds of disgusting human experiments. But the results of these tests aren't stated in most cases. E.g. what happened to the victims, what was learned from the experiments, did they actually work, etc. Is this intended? I think it would be interesting additions to the article. Mkomkomko (talk) 10:04, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Illogical Sentence

"The women—one of whom was operated on 30 times—regularly died from infections resulting from the experiments."

People can only die once. They can not die regularly. Also one woman survived 30 experiments. That sounds like good odds to me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.191.185.151 (talk) 08:57, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Not if you consider the fact that WOMEN is plural and WOMAN is sigular, so the regular 'dying' of subjects refers to women and not a single woman.

Epic fail! User 124.191.185.151 tried to be smart, in a very condescending way, but only succeeded in demonstrating his or her own ignorance. I love it when that happens! It teaches people humility and, hopefully, to read with greater care. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.249.254.100 (talk) 00:23, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Sourcing quality

Just as a brief assessment, the current list of the events in this article.

Some of the sources used here have been questioned, and I'd like to take a closer look at the list to see which could use a little more research. The organization and writing style of this article is awful, but verifiability comes first.

These are serious claims, and sometimes controversial. Given the shameful nature, we may have to be a little flexible about books that are used, but "I read it on the internet" isn't going to cut it. Problem areas are identified in italics.

Surgical

*J. Marion Sims and experiments on slaves: Three sources. The second supports the specific, graphic claim and is of poor quality. It's an English professor's website, reporting a claim by an "activist and artist" named Wendy Brinker (also co-host of a general interest local radio show). It does not give any sources for the claim, and it is clear that the piece is intended to demonize Sims, not to report facts, and is therefore highly unlikely to meet WP:RS. The first source mentions Sims (on page 1 of the book!), but does not talk about him in detail as far as I can tell. That source, which is also used later, appears to meet WP:RS and isn't a problem, but doesn't appear to support the specific claims in the article.

The Medical Apartheid book is actually cited in one of our other sources, and that's excellent evidence that it's a great source to use.

• Rafferty and Bartholow: One source, appears to meet WP:RS
• Stanley and San Quentin: Two sources, appears to meet WP:RS

Pathogens

• Leprosy and syphilis: One source, appears to meet WP:RS (the specific reference is on page 7, though it'd be nice if it were more detailed, the article almost plagiarizes the entire content of the claim). The source references another source, and it's probably best to refer back to that original source if possible.
• Heiman: Same source, again page 7. The book refers to a third patient as well, though the second source (again frustratingly terse) doesn't mention that third patient (since that book is only about children it's not surprising).

*Army and Philippines: Two sources, both dubious. One, as we've discussed, appears to be a class project. One of the references the article uses is some guy's earthlink web page. The references that that article uses, however, may be great sources for our use. Counterpunch again appears to be an activist website more interested in agenda than verifiability, and is highly unlikely to be reliable.
*Strong and the Phillipines: The second source shows that the plague wasn't an experiment-it was likely contaminated by negligence. There was research taking place, and the subjects died because of their participation in the trial, but they died because of contamination, not willful mistreatment.

• Tuberculin and orphans: The source referenced is a collection of essays. We should be referencing the essay, not the collection. It appears to be reliable, nonetheless.
• Knowles and Orphans: Again, page 7 of the book, which appears to be reliable, if terse.
• Noguchi and the Rockefeller Institute: Registration required for site, which means we should try and find another source if possible. I can't verify the claim, though it's almost certainly a reliable source.
• Tuskegee syphilis: 'nuff said.
• UMich, Francis and Salk: Cannot verify, not an online source, though appears to be reliable.
• Black and Herpes: Appears to meet WP:RS. The source actually talks about this as a paper that was rejected from publication due to ethical qualms. This is actually an interesting event that's worth covering, just because it shows how easily ethics concerns were avoided.
• Stateville Malaria: It has its own article.
• Alving and Malaria: This is really part of the Stateville issue, and I've joined those two paragraphs.
• Guatemala: If only it were all this easy.

*Serratia and San Francisco: Four cites, several of them dubious. Counterpunch and Democracy Now! are activist sites (i.e. unlikely to meet WP:RS. Neither book cited appears to actually support the 1951 California Serratia event. One refers to Operation Dew, which was not a disease agent, the other to an event at a different time and place.

• Stokes and Hepatitis: Would like to have more detail, but it's there.
• Hepatitis and Willowbrook: I have another source for this if necessary. It actually wasn't so much about developing a vaccine as figuring out the difference between Hepatitis A and Hepatitis B.

*Sloan-Kettering and Ohio State Prison: The UMD issue has been discussed above (i.e. this is not likely to be a real journal). The other reference I can't verify, though it appears to be a reliable source.
*CIA and Tampa Bay: We need better sources on this. The only ones I see are activists, not historians. This is obviously a situation where if the CIA hasn't admitted it, we won't be able to confirm it, but the article should at least reflect the unconfirmed (maybe unconfirmable) nature of the outbreak if it talks about it at all. Pertussis is extremely contagious, and stating that the CIA did it is impossible to prove unless you have an admission or some sort of evidence other than the disease itself. Pertussis was still common in the US in the 50's, though vaccines existed.

* Mosquito releases: Counterpunch is too tendentious to be a reliable source, though I have seen remarks about these mosquito release experiments in one of the books used as a source on this page so it's likely we can find a better source for this.

• Bacteria in subways: One of the sources given is an interview (i.e. a primary source), but given the existence of things like Project SHAD there are probably better sources out there for this in the article.

I'm going to stop there for now. My guess is that the MKULTRA and radiation sections will have little trouble with sourcing, though we should seriously consider trimming some of the topics in this article that have their own articles already rather than repeating it here. SDY (talk) 21:59, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree. After just briefly looking at a few sources here, it seems a lot of weight is placed on single articles, sometimes in the popular press, to make very lofty claims. One would think that some of the major allegations here would have more than a local news article to back it up. 129.176.151.11 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 05:17, 28 February 2011 (UTC).

Regarding Tuskegee experiment, when the study began they did not know penicillin was the cure. That wasn't until 1947 and the study began in 1932. Treatment at that time was so debilitating they wanted to find out if the cures were worse than the effects of the disease. The crime was not informing the subjects when a real cure was found and the true nature of their illness. There are many sources for this; whole books were written about it. Here's one: http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2002/jul/tuskegee/ Another: http://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/timeline.htm

I don't edit wiki pages but wanted to pass this information along. This is also congruent with the wiki page on the experiment. --TSM —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.135.108.202 (talk) 09:41, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

On the issue of Serratia, the reference to "a man killed" and a federal court denying the claim is not only poorly cited, it is also creates and unwarranted, given the cite, assumption. The citation goes to a line in a book, the line from the book referring to this event is itself footnoted implying a source that should be used rather than than the book itself. You don't just take the word of a secondary source when a primary source is available. Perhaps the court determined the man wasn't killed by the incident, perhaps they determined he was barred by the statue of limitations or did not meat his burden of proof, etc. Citing to the primary source rather than a secondary would be far preferable. 75.191.151.75 (talk) 19:57, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Possible source to use for future article expansion

• Alex Boese (2007). Elephants on Acid: And Other Bizarre Experiments. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 0156031353.

It's fully readable online too, and it's very interesting. If not used as a source itself I'm sure there's something from this book that can be used to expand this article. -- œ^™ 12:31, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Unethical?

Who's to say? It's Wikipedia policy to remain neutral, and I don't how you could possibly be neutral on a moral issue by flat out labeling the article as 'unethical'.

Certainly a quick viewing of the article reveals several instances that I doubt few would call morally justified, but not all of the information is quite so black and white. At the very least, ethics can be weighed when talking about patient consent and medical advancement - sure it might not be against the current medical code, but you can't deny that saving millions of life by preforming a patient that the majority of patients wouldn't agree to is automatically negative.

99.130.204.246 (talk) 05:06, 26 April 2011 (UTC)stann3

These comments above would seem to be a load of tripe. Infecting people with diseases and testing drugs on them without their consent cannot be viewed any other way than a crime against humanity. Any suggestion otherwise is just ridiculous. The USA making daft suggestions about any other country disregarding human rights is a slap in the face of any straight thinking human being. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.171.157.67 (talk) 10:54, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

To some, it's harder to accept something as true when it's much easier to accuse Wikipedia of being biased.--Hoyt596 (talk) 07:13, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

I can think of at least two ethical philosophies under which this may not NECESSARILY be considered unethical, and they are nihilism and certain forms of utilitarianism, but even this is irrelevant. Unless morality can be proven beyond doubt to be objective (good luck) then Wikipedia is here violating the principle of having a neutral point of view.58.110.189.156 (talk) 22:13, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Research of those exposed to radiation by the Castle Bravo test was not necessarily unethical and until my edit this article was presenting it inaccurately. The old version seemed to suggest that citizens were deliberately placed down-wind of nuclear fallout in order to study the effects of radiation on their bodies. Historically, the Castle Bravo weapon is understood to have detonated with vastly greater yield than predicted: making otherwise reasonable accommodations to protect people grossly insufficient. It seems reasonable to take the opportunity to study the effects of radiation on people who have already been exposed to it. Glom2215 (talk) 00:56, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Morality does not need to be proven beyond doubt to be objective through interminable wikiedit-warring - the weight of evidence and history and jurisprudence regarding similar (read: foreign) human experimentation clearly puts these abuses in the unethical camp: Karl Brandt's (et al.) actions leading to their prosecution as war criminals at the Doctor's Trial and to the establishment of the Nuremberg Code which define minimum standards of medical and research ethics. If anything falls below these ethical standards, it cannot be anything other than unethical. And that applies to Castle Bravo as much as it does to Tuskegee. This section gives lie to Glom2215's claim that it was not necessarily unethical, in that it shows clear disregard to the situation (General Clarkson points to a diagram indicating that the wind shift was still in the range of "acceptable fallout", although just barely) and to obvious victims (Radioactive fallout was spread eastward onto the inhabited Rongelap and Rongerik atolls, which were tardily evacuated), foreknowledge (Dr. Graves had himself received an exposure of 400 röntgens in the 1946 Los Alamos accident in which his personal friend, Dr. Louis Slotin, died from radiation exposure.) and an over-riding ethos that the ends justified the means (Hadley points out that 20,000 people live in the potential area of the fallout. He asks the control panel scientist if the test can be aborted and is told "yes", but it would ruin all their preparations in setting up timed measuring instruments in the race against the Russians). It appears that Castle Bravo had unintended benefits in the shape of Project 4.1 - the cynic would say the ends justify the means - again. While we may inherently "know" that anything prefixed by "Nazi", or "Imperialist Japan" fails to meet any base standards, this criticism of labelling any american abuses for what they really are is nothing more than historical revisionism. If one is so intent on claiming some moral high ground then they also need to accept that sometimes they've fallen below the standards they claim to hold. FanN | talk 10:59, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Withdrawn by nominator, given the valid points about the ambiguity that would be caused. Although I'm not sure "unethical" is the right word, simply removing it isn't an improvement. - SudoGhost 18:58, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Unethical human experimentation in the United States → Human experimentation in the United States – Unethical is a contentious label. There are no set rules of what is ethical and what is not; ethics vary from person to person and from country to country. This means that even if a majority of authors of reliable sources that express the opinion that something is unethical, it is still an opinion and should not be used in the title as if it is a universal fact, but should instead be stated in the article with in text attribution explaining who called this unethical. - SudoGhost 12:45, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose "Unethical" can be a contentious label but Wikipedia is a place to sort things on practical and not philosophical grounds. If someone actually has sources saying that the experiments were ethical then there is a place for the counterpoint in this article. Wikipedia is NPOV in the sense that it presents all perspectives in reliable sources. Wikipedia is entirely POV when reliable sources present only one POV, and that is how things are supposed to be. While there were ethical parts to the experiments listed in this article, these experiments are only notable for the broad discussion they invoked on being unethical.

Also, if the name of this article were changed to "Human experimentation in the United States" then it would be wildly biased because every part of this article only describes events which consensus says were outrageously inappropriate as science. If there is to be a general "human experimentation in the United States" article then it needs to have a lot of content which could be called "ethical", and even in that case, there is enough content about the unethical experimentation to merit its own article. An alternative to writing a lot of content could be to change the word "unethical" to something else which indicates the theme of failure in these experiments.

I am very interested in what you are proposing and would like to work with you on this. I have been trying to sort a reform on many of the human research articles- do you want to talk about this? Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:56, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose changes the scope of the article. Human experimentation in the US occurs all the time, even right now, such as with class I,II,III clinical trials. Haptic studies for industrial ergonomics. Even basic high school biology classes, where you determine your blood type. 70.24.251.71 (talk) 04:25, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
• Support. 70.24, you are wrong on a few counts. First, while it is true that on the surface (the bare English syntax) that by deleting the word "unethical" we will expand the scope of the article, in practice this is not correct. We do not need or desire an article that includes both "clinical trials" and "human experimentation" as if they are one concept. I don't know how you can conflate those two things in practice, as they are two sides of a coin. It is like the difference between nude photography and pornography. We need the modifier "nude" for one concept, but not the other. Clearly, there is no "human experimentation" in biology classes. This is a matter of syntax and semantics. A newspaper ad for "clinical trials" would not attract potential subjects by calling their study "human experimentation" ... because these words mean more when placed together than their dictionary definition implies. Thus, semantically, the word "unethical" smacks of both redundancy when describing "human experimentation" and yet it is also (as others say) unspecific. It is a filler word which we don't need in order to convey the subject matter.
• (continued) Many other problems arise with the "unethical" label, as others have said. One problem is defining what was historically or is now unethical. And what cultural or societal criteria define "unethical"? It is too big a can of worms to sort through. I would think that not all instances of human experimentation discussed would fit in the "unethical" regime for all people. So for those who oppose, would you also rename articles about "Indians" or "slaves" from the 18th century with "unethical treatment of humans" when some people's ethics dictated that they treat them differently than we do in the 21st? It's a poor word choice, so I support. I like to saw logs! (talk) 07:00, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
  • Newspaper articles many times portray clinical trials as human experimentation, especially when something goes wrong, so you have not got it right. Not to mention all the psychology experiments that are also called human experimentation in the popular press. Etc. 70.24.251.71 (talk) 08:09, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
    • There is still the issue of what to make of the precise word "unethical" and how its presence in the title colors the article. The word "secretive" would be more consistent in many cases, as most of the large governmental and large experiments (note I didn't say "clinical trials") were done such that neither the public nor the subjects were informed in a timely fashion. Secrecy doesn't mean unethical in every case.
    • We could also use terms related to "disclosure" or "prior consent" or "informed consent." The purpose of shifting away from "unethical" is to prevent the Wikipedia from becoming just another commentary on contentious subjects. Labels have to be used considering multiple views, even sometimes the minority view that some human experimentation was ethical. There are some who feel that the end justifies the means. Whether that idea is commonplace in the West or in the minds of English Wikipedians might be irrelevant. Obviously individuals in the U.S. government have long held the belief that "secrecy" and military readiness trumps morality, ethics, and the absolute sanctity of human life. I believe that the word "unethical" puts the threshold at "absolute sanctity of life," which is a concept more appropriate in a discussion about religion, not medicine. So labeling each of the U.S. government's experiments "unethical" is not for the Wikipedia to determine, but rather for commentators. "Secrecy" and "informed consent" can at least be better defined. I like to saw logs! (talk) 00:46, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose The term "unethical" is not subjective in this specific context. All legitimate scientific experimentation involving human subjects (whether they are clinical trials, empirical research or anything else) are required by law to be subject to approval and oversight by an ethics committee composed of uninvolved specialists. The scope of this article is clearly about those experiments wich failed to meet the ethical standards of such committees, or were never approved by such a process in the first place. Roger (talk) 07:10, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose It's been awhile since I've read this article but it wasn't about humane "clinical trials". Most of it was unequivocally macabre, and would have been all the more shocking in it's own time. That's what makes it a compelling read. The title should convey the subject matter's morbid appeal without sensationalizing it, and frankly "unethical" puts it mildly. It does the medical and scientific communities no favor (not to mention the government agencies) if we characterize it as business as usual, adjusting for inflation and the merciless drift of moral relativism. I recall US citizens, convicts and servicemen, did it mention "Indians" and "slaves"? Again, it's been quite some time, but the 20th century seemed to comprise a hefty portion of it. For better or worse, early birds have dispatched the canned worms but pornography is a tenuous analogy, snuff films if any… as opposed to what I'm not sure, turn your head, cough and smile for quality assurance?—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 09:08, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose Objections constitute moral relativism at its worst. Apostle12 (talk) 09:28, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose Maybe there is a better title than "unethical" to describe what this article covers, but a bare "human experimentation" title wouldn't accurately convey what this article covers. Most human subject research in the U.S. has nothing to do with the types of incidents described in this article. It would be nice if someone wrote an article about human subject research in the U.S. generally. Calliopejen1 (talk) 02:18, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Minor change

I removed the reference to the Fourth Geneva Convention from the biological section. GC IV applies to civilians in other countries during wartime, yet it was parenthetically referenced with regards to the CIA spraying whooping cough on US citizens. Though GC IV wouldn't apply at all, US law certainly would. Hzoi (talk) 14:34, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Major issues

1. Title. This subject is commonly known as "human experimentation in the United States". No idea why it was changed last year, but it should be moved back to the common name.
2. Outline. This is the most confused article structure I have ever seen. Whomever decided to eliminate the historical chronology and replace it with a list of experiments by subject is confused about how we write articles. While that might be a good structure for a list, we write articles with history in mind. The current structure is neither conducive to reader understanding nor informative.
3. Narrative. This is barely an article and more of a glorified list, a pastiche of sorts. It needs to explain, in summary, the history of medical experimentation, what rules were already in place before the experiments were performed, and how future research changed. Along the way it needs to talk about the major projects in terms of intelligence goals and military applications.
4. Details. We're told that the govt. brought 1600 Nazi scientists into the U.S. to continue their work, but we don't have any information about what kind of work they performed.
5. Conclusions. How have the results of these secret/illegal/unethical experiments been used to inform modern medicine?

Viriditas (talk) 13:22, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

To be frank, I've thought this entire article is a load of WP:SYNTH, wholly inappropriate for an encyclopedia and ridiculously subject to WP:POV and WP:COATRACK issues. I'm not sure this thing can be saved. I'd be for a simple delete. NickCT (talk) 12:41, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree with NickCT and Viriditas, at the very least the article should have a POV tag. Indeed, it should be switched back to "human experimentation in the United States" as there was no consensus to switch the title and focus of the article. V7-sport (talk) 02:27, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Hello NickCT -- Could you please describe where synthesis is occurring -- that is, can you show where the article is "combining material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources"? Could you please describe what you think is a violation of WP:POV? WP:COATRACK is an essay, not a policy, so COATRACK issues are a matter of personal opinion, not of policy. That said, I do not agree with you that the problem described in WP:COATRACK is occuring here. That is, I do not think that the article is "ostensibly discussing the nominal subject, but is in reality a cover for a tangentially related biased subject." I think the article is discussing the nominal subject in an objective manner -- that is, I think that the article is objectively discussing unethical human experimentation in the United States, just like the sources it cites do.

A few points regarding deletion:

• There are several books, journal articles, chapters of bioethics textbooks, etc. that have been written specifically on the topic of this article (unethical, nonconsensual, and/or illegal medical experiments in the U.S.). They clearly separate this topic from that of human subject research in the United States in general.
• There exist articles for several other nations that are similar to this one, such as Nazi human experimentation, North Korean human experimentation, Japanese human experimentation. They exist for the same reason that this one should exist -- numerous high-quality reliable sources have identified these topics as worthy of study in themselves.
• A wide array of reliable sources have identified this article's topic as worthy of standing alone as an object of analysis, separate from the broader history of human subject research in general. Per WP:NOTABLE that means that the topic of this article is worth of its own article. Just because many of the experiments in this article are things that most people would consider "bad" (which is why most medical ethics textbooks generally use them as illustrations of "bad science") does not mean that it is "biased" to have an article on them. WP:NPOV does not say that articles can't be about "bad things". It says that we should neutrally report what reliable sources have to say about things, regardless of our moral/ethical views on them. This article neutrally reports what medical ethics texts, and histories of this topic have to say about it. I am not aware of anywhere in the article where it is not neutrally reporting what reliable sources are saying.

That said, like all articles, this article is an incomplete work in progress, so there are certainly issues. Rather than merely citing policy without reference to this article, please make specific suggestions for how to improve this article. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 04:34, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

re Jrtayloriv - "There are several books, journal articles, chapters of bioethics textbooks, etc. that have been written specifically on the topic of this article" - Wrong. There are a number of books that have been written about the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, yes. There are a numbers of RSs whose focus is Project SHAD, yes. There are few (if any) RSs that try to cover all human experimentation (ethical or otherwise), solely in the United States.

This article takes those sources which deal with individual subjects (i.e. the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, and Project SHAD) and combines "material from multiple sources to reach or imply" that the subject as a whole is notable. NickCT (talk) 12:49, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

In support of NickCT, Viriditas and V7-sport. The article should have a POV tag and the title reverted to "human experimentation in the United States" if not deleted outright. Arugia (talk) 06:46, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

As per user Fanx's explanation above, there is legal precedence and established international guidelines that determine what exactly is considered unethical in research. As far as these standards are concerned, standards which the modern medical and scientific communities determine the quality of research, everything in this article would be considered unethical by these definitions. That being said, I am in favour of a POV tag being added as I think there is definitely POV wording in the article, which is probably unavoidable when writing or discussing such a contentious issue as unethical human experimentation. However, since these experiments are indeed unethical by the standards which the scientific and medical communities hold themselves to, I think the title should remain "Unethical human experimentation in the United States" as this accurately describes the content of the article.69.196.168.189 (talk) 18:38, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

I'll also add that the title "human experimentation in the United States" is very broad and inclusive, and would require that instances of experimentation where consent was given and no ethical or moral violations were thought to have been made would reasonably also have to be included. This, in my opinion, would degrade the article much more then it's current state.69.196.168.189 (talk) 18:45, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

The title, "Unethical human experimentation in the United States" seems fine to me. Please do not change it or delete the article. Apostle12 (talk) 05:39, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

This is ridiculous, why can't we just remove the word 'unethical'? It wasn't deemed necessary for these titles: Nazi human experimentation, Human experimentation in North Korea, Japanese human experimentation. Is the United States really more evil than Nazi Germany?? It's issues like these challenge Wikipedia's status as an intellectually serious encyclopedia. ~~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.198.193.106 (talk) 08:07, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Be nice. There are lots of reasons for keeping the name "unethical" in the title and it is not proper to dismiss the idea as ridiculous. Sometimes on Wikipedia it is not certain what the correct action is, so that is why there are discussions. There is no article for Japanese human experimentation and there is no information about ethical Nazi or North Korean experimentation, if there is information to share. See the move section below. Blue Rasberry (talk) 10:14, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Because there is a difference between unethical human experimentation and human experimentation?98.121.92.169 (talk) 00:07, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

The inclusion of "Unethical" in the title is appropriate - and this is indeed a legitimate subject, irrespective of how good or bad the material makes any particular individual feel. There seems to be some confusion, whether willful or otherwise, about the meaning of the word 'ethics.' 'Ethics' does not have the same meaning as 'morality.' Qualifications of morality do not require the consensus of a group such as a society or profession, whereas those of ethics do; ethics concerns what is asserted to be acceptable or right, not what is "true." Consequently it is correct to characterize the human experimentation written about in this article as "unethical," whether or not a given individual agrees that any of the activity was or is morally right or morally wrong. Further, even if at some time accepted practice may have deviated radically from what was stated to be accepted practice, this does not mean that what was done was ethical, because activities may still have violated stated rules or principles, however common or accepted such violations may have been. It should be noted directly that there appear to be a number of critics of the article's title who resent the possibility that the USA might be characterized as having done anything unethical. The need or desire to suppress or deny the validity of factual material in order to support one's preferred characterizations of a society and culture, whether one's own or another, is bias, and the influence of any such feeling or motivation on characterizations of factual material is a corruption of information, however normal or even prevalent this phenomenon may be. It would be a failure of objectivity to privilege the cosmology or priorities of any individual or group, such as persons who wish for a particular characterization of the USA to be believed valid by all, over unbiased factual statement. Such a phenomenon might be unremarkable, perhaps normative, but no less a failure for that. Protestations that the title implies things it doesn't say are unreasonable though unsurprising. Neither the title nor the article make any assertion that there is equivalence between the United States and Nazi Germany or imperial Japan or any other regime, country, society or group. That comparison is not made, let alone any assertion of equivalence between regimes of governance. Comparison and equation are two fundamentally different things, and in reality one precludes the other (since there must be differences if two compared things are not actually the same, single thing), though that's certainly normally denied or ignored in the rhetoric of the English-speaking world and elsewhere as well! Grinq (talk) 9 September 2012

referenced work #156 (Author named Goliszek)

(Thursday, April 26th,2012 1:23am zip code 21704~usa)

Reference#156 is probably a work of Science Fiction.... @ http://www.us.macmillon.com/author/andrewgoliszek quote"......The author of two books of science fiction, he teaches biology, ......." 'In The Name Of Science: A History of.......'

          @ St.Martin's Press

12.153.34.130 (talk) 05:34, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Utter failure

Let me just echo what the other person said above. This article's title is an insult to people's intelligence. It also makes wikipedia inconsistent so that you have "Nazi human experimentation" etc etc in dozens of languages but here we have a special category. It is really really really inconsistent, confusing, and annoying to the reader who is simply looking for information and facts. IF someone wants to split off several articles, "unethical experiments," "ethical experiments", etc, then good for them, but that is not what has been done. There are a huge number of experiments that dont fit because they are secret and/or we dont have the information yet. The poor writer has to make a value judgement before even deciding which article to put it in. I know somebody will say 'oh you can decide whether something is ethical or not. no problem', actually thats not what wiki is supposed to do, its supposed to rely on the judgement of experts, and alot of experiments the experts have not weighed in necessarily or its really hard to find a quote from an expert. Decora (talk) 14:12, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

I think understand what you're saying, and I'm sure parts of the article could be improved with better citations, but the rules of what constitutes ethical human experimentation are established and quite clear in the United States. I think it basically boils down to:

1. informed consent
2. capacity to give consent (such as being mentally competent enough to understand what consent means)
3. responsibility for the researchers to ensure the dangers of the experiment have been evaluated and fully disclosed
4. the experiment can reasonably be determined to be safe enough for human trials, usually through prior animal experimentation or Generally Recognized as Safe criteria.

Badon (talk) 22:56, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

About the reason why the Nazi human experimentation article does not include the word "unethical", perhaps it is because there were no established ethical criteria at that time and place? Or, even if ethics were established, maybe they were routinely disregarded? That kind of distinction should probably be made clear in the introductory paragraphs. Badon (talk) 23:00, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

The complaint that has been continually re-hashed about presence or absence of the word 'unethical' in a title or characterization is not genuinely reasonable in my view. Using one particular word is not the only way to convey an idea, so that the absence of the word 'unethical' in the title about Nazi experiments, for example, is hardly a suggestion that Nazi experiments were ethical. The title of one article does not govern the meaning of other titles. Titles of articles are natural language chosen by the authors of the articles, not a single organic system in which any usage has a cascade effect requiring conformity of characterization across all conceptually-related writing. There is no implication made by the absence of a characterization someone else has made in another context. A title such as "Nazi human experiments" is likely to suggest that these experiments were unethical to most readers in a way that the title "American human experiments" would not; that's not to argue for lack of precision, but to say there are different contextual standards for different subjects; also, any title can be precise to a limited degree, and standard usage of language dictates an emphasis on brevity... These observations are not genuinely necessary to make, however, since there is clearly no real problem. There are many things that could be said about why "inconsistency" isn't a genuine concern here but only the complaint of persons who likely don't accept that the USA has ever done anything bad, including the observation that, if the subject were less culturally-charged, no one would have argued so much about the title and legitimacy of an article which clearly has substantial information that is of interest and inherently demonstrates the legitimacy of the stated subject. Whether or not people like something does not determine whether it is true or real and consequently fine material for an article. (I hate spiders, but I do not assert that articles on spiders must be deleted because "if spiders really existed, there would be no hope"!) Grinq (talk) 01:39, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing and hanging out on this page. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:43, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Index of Human Radiation Experiments (Declassified)

The is too large of an addition for me to tackle. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/radiation/dir/mstreet/commeet/meet1/brief1/br1n.txt

I am working on Operation Red Hat, Project 112, Project SHAD if any pros want to help an amateur wikipedia editor make 100% verifiable military historical A class articles with the no copyright gov info, photos and videos that I gather please message me on my talk page.Johnvr4 (talk) 03:40, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Dan Markingson's suicide in a trial

User:RMNixon1972 just added this content.

I do not think this article is the place for this. The other examples in that article set major precedent and were extensively covered in academic literature. I am not sure where this case could go. Adding it to the queue at list of medical ethics cases might be more appropriate. Thoughts? I posted on that user's talk page also. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:14, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment (and your patience.) I think the Markingson case may have received more academic attention than you think. You can find it discussed in IRB Advisor, for example, and in Elliott's White Coat, Black Hat.

http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/33725224/conflict-interest-issues-raised-by-subjects-suicide

http://www.amazon.com/White-Coat-Black-Hat-Adventures/dp/0807061425

Also, the case resulted in a change in Minnesota law so that psychiatrists are now banned from recruiting patients under an involuntary commitment order into psychiatric drug studies.

https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/?id=253B.095&format=pdf

The case has also been discussed in academic sessions at meetings of Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research, the American Association of Bioethics and Humanities, Pharmed Out, and the Australasian Association of Bioethics and Health Law.

Also, while many of the examples on this page have indeed received a substantial amount of attention from academics and policymakers, quite a few have only been reported in the press or in a single book (for example, some of the examples cited in Goliszek's In The Name of Science.)

RMNixon1972 (talk) 13:37, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Hmm... I still think the content does not belong, but this article has bigger problems and I changed my mind and replaced what you added. What I think should happen is that this case should get its own article. It should be added to this list of similar cases. This page should link to that list, and at most, a 1-2 sentence of this case should be somewhere on this page. I think this page is too general to host all the information about this case. I also think you are right about other cases featured on this page - they are not fundamental to understanding the subject of the article and they ought to be elsewhere as well. Until there is a plan to sort what to do with the cases then I think keeping the content here is the best action. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:21, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Good point. I have created a page for Markingson which is being reviewed. RMNixon1972 (talk) 14:36, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

(Double edit conflict) From a brief review of the page, it looks to me like it is already a poorly selected list of cases, based heavily on news articles and journalism books, not academic literature. I think that's a normal evolutionary stage in such a broad-ranging article, before natural categories emerge and the minor cases get spun off to them. I don't know if anyone outside of Wikipedia has undertaken a comprehensive review of "unethical human experimentation in the United States," and until we find that, WP:SYNTH doesn't allow us to do anything more than compile a list. I don't see why Dan Markingson would be excluded from such a list. The only reason might be if we rename this page to "...funded by the United States" which already seems to be where the focus is.--Yannick (talk) 14:40, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

I cannot recommend any particular book or paper right now but I would expect that there must be hundreds of reviews already written which would constitute a comprehensive review of some perspective of the article's subject. There also are organizations which ought to be happy to direct people to key literature in the field - the Hastings Center is a major specialty think tank, but every major city has at least one medical library which should be able to help as well. "Funded by the United States" is a blurry line and not a distinction I would expect to ever see in the literature because lots of research is conducted either in public universities or public hospitals, and it is not obvious whether that is "funded by the United States". We should start collecting comprehensive reviews - I suppose using those as a model is the first step to proposing an outline of how this article should look. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:31, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Renaming proposal

I propose that this article be renamed to Ethics of human experimentation in the United States. That subtle shift in focus may resolve much of the POV concerns discussed above and align the article more closely with available academic publications, without requiring any deletion of content. The key point to recognize is that virtually all of the experimenters referenced thought they were behaving ethically according to the standards of their day, and had their supporters. In their paradigm, they thought they were serving the greater good, or at least doing negligible harm. Many of those cases helped shape the modern concept of ethics which now condemns them, and that evolution of ethical principles needs to be presented for context. Consider that the principle of informed consent that we take for granted was not developed until the Nuremberg trials, and it took decades for it to be adopted universally. This article should be modelled after ethics textbooks, where questionable historical practices are examined unflinchingly, as are modern challenges like the Dan Markingson case. But to condemn all these cases up front as unethical without historical context is not neutral.--Yannick (talk) 04:09, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Your proposal is compelling, but before I give support for it, I'd like to hear the opposing viewpoint or cons from this move. For example, how would the content evolve in a different direction after the name change? For now, it's much like a list of interesting things that at this time are or would be construed as unethical by whatever ethical standards judgment that would ostensibly apply - with the point of this article currently being mostly that OSTENSIBLE ethical standards do not equate to ACTUAL ADHERENCE to those standards. I suspect renaming the article would shift the focus of the article dramatically. Badon (talk) 07:36, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Oppose for the following reasons:

1. This proposal was made in March 2012 and those objections stand.
2. Changing the title has nothing to do with changing the content, and this article only contains content about unethical experimentation. Changing the title would only serve to apply a misleading label to this content. There is also no content about "ethics of human experimentation in the United States" anywhere - see for example Human subject research, Clinical research ethics, or Template:Research participant rights
3. Ytrottier's key point about the scientists not knowing that their work was unethical is irrelevant because there are no sources for this. Almost all of the experiments in this page all came to prominence because as soon as they entered public discourse they were universally deemed unethical. It would be fascinating to find apologists defending any of these cases but I would not expect anyone to find publications doing this. That perspective is only theoretical and does not exist.
4. Despite being entirely negative, this article meets WP:NPOV because there is no particular need to balance the tiny fraction of bad cases with the normal good cases which people expect. It would be analogous to renaming Crime in the United States to "Legal statuses of things people do in the United States" to show that people do both legal and illegal things. In that case, the bad things are remarkable enough to merit their own article without having a counterbalancing article for "Ordinary legal things in the United States".
5. About research before the advent of modern ethics practices - this article is not suggesting that pre-modern research was unethical because they had not developed standards. Most of the cases presented in this article are here because they were test cases which incited the development of new ethical guidelines, and others are here to retrospectively justify research protections which clinicians use now. The article is not dredging up a happy past and presenting it in a bad way. There were no happy times for these cases.
6. If there were to be some kind of balancing of content, I would like to see the proposed content developed elsewhere first and proposed with the rename. The rename is trivial and could happen at any time, but just performing the rename will not result in people finding sources or developing this article in a new way. That would be a massive undertaking which probably would be done against the typical outline of literature in human subject research. This article came to be because it reflects discourse in the literature and the way people practice in the field. I would be interested to see any proposed outline for shifting the focus of the article and I would also like to see proposed sources which give an overview of "Ethics of human experimentation in the United States" in any other way than giving a history of unethical cases and saying after each one, "Because of this case researchers do not do X anymore".

Blue Rasberry (talk) 12:51, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Long reply! Thank you for your passion making sure that we do what's best for Wikipedia. First, I'd like to reassure you that I am not trying to obscure past crimes or dilute the article with mundane examples of ethical behaviour. I come at this as a Canadian engineer who has done a fair amount of reading about engineering ethics and is currently reading The Plutonium Files, which covers about 20% of the cases in this article. I'm quite horrified by the things my industry has done in the past. But the claim that these practices were "universally deemed unethical" and that no published apologists exist is provably false. For example, The Plutonium Files discusses many of those excuses and their supporters, many of them coming from court cases that had a tough time reaching a verdict. My engineering ethics textbook is full of historical examples of engineers who thought they were within the rules, but became textbook cases supporting the need for the new rules or better enforcement. Even the Nazis had, and still have, their apologists, who deserve mention in conjunction with a thorough explanation of the mainstream view. But in any case, I am not proposing that we write up a defense of these past experiments, only that we withhold judgment from the title of the article and let the material speak for itself. I see this as a different proposal from the March 2012 discussion to simply drop the word "unethical". Many opponents in that debate rightly pointed out that an article under the name of "Human experimentation in the United States" would have to focus on the much more common ethical practices. I think many of those opponents would be more receptive to my suggestion, but I'll let them speak for themselves. I think that articles about "Ethics of [field] in [location]" would follow the same vein as "[field] ethics", e.g. engineering ethics and medical ethics which both have lists of ethical failures. Another model to consider is Human subject research legislation in the United States. Looking beyond Wikipedia, a google search for "Ethics of human experimentation" quickly turns up academic articles that focus on ethical failures. So I think that's the title format that best fits the existing content.--Yannick (talk) 15:24, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

A few cases in the article are considered unethical by some people (namely the experimenters), and unethical by other people. In other words, the "gray area" that this article covers are "ethically controversial" experiments. I think of that as an edge case, so I don't think it would be right to rename the article "Ethically controversial experimentation in the United States". In fact, I think I have to agree with reasons to oppose the change in article title. A better solution might be to separate out ethically controversial cases into their own section in the article. I would be surprised if we could find enough content for the article as it is to put something to fill that section, but maybe with a little work we could find cases that are notably controversial as to whether they are ethical or not. Off the top of my head, I can't think of anything, but maybe there's a compromise along these lines that could help to improve the informativeness of the article in a way that educates the reader that some cases are not clearly yes/no, black/white, as to whether they are unethical or not. Badon (talk) 00:47, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Now that I think about it, separating out information into yet another subsection would only make the article confusing. Instead, it might be better to just indicate using cites in the appropriate places when a particular case is considered controversial, with a short description of the points of contention in the controversy. Badon (talk) 00:50, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Yannick - I would need to see the sources you have, but I still think no apologists exist. People often say that the researchers did nothing unethical while simultaneously saying that the participants experienced harm from something unethical about the situation. I suspect that the explanations you have say that the researchers might not have been guilty or that there was no obvious human misconduct without saying that the human subjects were in an ethical clinical trial. A court case would likely not prove ethics - unethical behavior is often legal, and a court will only decide criminal guilt or civil liability without making a judgment on researchers' self-regulated concept of ethics. The title change you propose does sound like a good direction for the content in this article but I think the title change should come after some amount of content change, or perhaps there is already content here which supports this new labeling. I feel like the majority of the article would be out of line with that title right now though. That book about "Ethics of human experimentation" would need to include both failures and positive information because it has to present the topic of research ethics, whereas for this article general information not specific to the United States would go in the main article. Excluding all general information is what gives this article the slant to ethics failures. I had not considered Human subject research legislation in the United States - this should tie-in but I am not sure how.

Badon - I agree with you that sorting this article is confusing and that it is not easy to find the right way. I also think that there is something about the current arrangement which makes me feel like it ought to be better, but I do not know how to better sort it. Blue Rasberry (talk) 12:56, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Blue, in order to reach consensus we need a way establish the outside facts. Therefore if you are skeptical of my claims, I would ask that you make some effort to check my sources, or refer me to contrary sources that you found. You can find The Plutonium Files here. You can find many other discussions of apologists online, for example here:

"The records now show that many victims of the [US] government’s radiation experiments did not voluntarily consent as required by the [Nuremberg] Code. As late as 1959, Harvard Medical School researcher Henry Beecher viewed the Code 'as too extreme and not squaring with the realities of clinical research.' Another physician said the Code had little effect on mainstream medical morality and 'doubted the ability of the sick to understand complex facts of their condition in a way to make consent meaningful.' Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1996, Jay Katz recalls an argument at Harvard Medical School in 1961 suggesting that the Code was not necessarily pertinent to or adequate for the conduct of research in the United States. Katz writes: 'The medical research community found, and still finds, the stringency of the NC’s first principle all too onerous.' [...] In The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code, Katz concludes that many doctors view the Code as 'a good code for barbarians but an unnecessary code for ordinary physicians.' "

It's true that purely ethical cases do not usually wind up in court, but they are tried by quasi-judicial regulatory hearings that can be appealed in court. There is overlap between law and ethics, and the court decisions do mandate changes in ethical codes. So if we were to strictly follow this article's current title, then we should remove J. Marion Sims and many other key cases, or at least diminish their importance, since Sims was never found guilty of a breach of ethics. He pretty much died a hero.

Please be assured that I am not defending Sims, nor do I propose to try to defend him in the article, nor am I serious about deleting him. I think he had an appalling shortage of compassion and humanity, and the article should lead a sensible reader to the same conclusion. But his relevance was as someone who pushed an ethical boundary, caused harm that sparked public indignation a century later, and whose case pushed the medical profession to re-evaluate their ethical perspective on race and gender issues. He was not a criminal and never lost his license, but he is an example of why new laws were passed and ethics evolved.--Yannick (talk) 17:17, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

If you want to talk this through then message me and we can phone or Skype - I make the same offer to anyone else. Do not read skepticism into what I wrote; text sometimes seems to convey emotion but there is none here from me except interest and curiosity. I have time to talk but not time to reply for a few days. I will be back next week, but I hope that other people also reply. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:31, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

New angle: Most other pages relating to human experimentation without consent or ethical reasons are named "North Korean human experimentation", "Japanese human experimentation". I would suggest removing the work "Unethical". Even the top clarification link is to "Human subject research", and not "ethical human subject research". The implicit difference is that the USA is the only place where research in humans can be ethical or unethical.83.70.170.48 (talk) 11:54, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject Human Rights

I just realized that this is one of the most popular pages within the scope of WikiProject Human Rights. See their list here, and also consider checking out the interview with some of their members in The Signpost. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:19, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Integrate relevant topics from the See also into the article

--Niemti (talk) 22:56, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

This is a great idea. This article could use a lot of development. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:02, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Troop photo

This photo was being used to illustrate the article, with the caption: "U.S. troops being used to measure the effects of radiation exposure from tactical nuclear weapons, during Exercise Desert Rock I (November 1, 1951)". I note it is presented without citation and without any discussion in the body of the article.

This is inaccurate and thus inappropriate. The Desert Rock exercises were used to gauge the psychological reaction of troops to seeing tactical nuclear weapons. It was not a test meant to inadvertently expose the troops to much radiation at all.

There have been plenty of concerns about whether such exercises did inadvertently expose troops, but that wasn't the point of the tests. They did do plenty of research on humans with these tests, but whether this was unethical or not is a broadly complicated question — the ethics of using military troops in military exercises that happen to provide data is a trickier one. Surely one can use a better and less ambiguous image to illustrate this article; there are plenty of more clear-cut cases. --Mr.98 (talk) 16:45, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

timeline

The article lists all the dates but it doesn't say who considers them unethical — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.248.75.125 (talk) 17:18, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

re: Goliszek claims

while reading through this article I noticed that in many cases the most audacious and troubling claims were sourced only to Goliszek 2003, the book "In the Name of Science".

some of the claims under the section Human radiation experiments, namely "In a 1967 study that was published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, pregnant women were injected with radioactive cortisol to see if it would cross the placental barrier and affect the fetuses," sounded like benign radiolabeling experiments to me, and so I grew suspicious of Goliszek's claims -- a doubt that was reinforced by the numerous Amazon reviews calling his book "a repetitive tirade of unsupported opinions and scare tactics" and "loaded to the gills not only with bad science, but bad writing and bad research."

Goliszek 2003 only cites its sources in a chapter-end bibliography, so it's difficult to verify his sourcing by following links back from his book, but upon checking PubMed (searching for "human" and "placenta" in all J Clin Invest papers between 1967 and 1975), I found the paper upon which this claim was originally based: Bayard, et al., "Transplacental passage and fetal secretion of aldosterone" (1970). Goliszek 2003 has no full-text matches for "aldosterone" on Google Books, so presumably he digested someone else's writeup of the experiment.

in any case, the paper's methods section indicates that informed consent was obtained from all of the human subjects involved, and that "[t]he experimental project was reviewed and approved by the Committees on Clinical Investigation and the Committees on Radiation Control of The Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland". PubMed also shows that the paper has been cited by 7 other medical papers, but none of them are papers in medical ethics, which one would expect for an unethically-conducted study of any infamy.

does this claim really belong on a page about unethical human experimentation? should any of Goliszek's other claims be reviewed? 70.36.196.32 (talk) 19:59, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

I am listening. I think you have a good point, 70.whatever. This needs to be considered. I think it is obvious that Goliszek published a sort of pop-sci book that is a synthesis of everything that allegedly went wrong in science research. Well, for that matter, so is this article. As such, the marriage of this article and a lot of the bunk disseminated as scare tactics by authors like Goliszek is a perfect match. I was wondering how this article had become such a monstrous, unwieldy collection of apocrypha, anecdotes, and innuendo. It seems that this is 21st century revisionism. I don't know who got up on a pedestal and preached all of this in the article, but here is a good reason to consider wiping it out and starting over. We need to go back and consider some secondary sources... the tertiary sources seem to dominate here, especially once you get into ethics. When this article's name was changed, I didn't realize how these ethics problems get into such a revisionist mentality... The retrospective lookback taints the issues, glossing things over in ethical non sequiturs. This is the type of article you read and then regret reading it, because you are unsure if the information was persuasive to your mind's logical abilities by tugging at your emotions. If the article is correct, it should simultaneously persuade both. I like to saw logs! (talk) 07:26, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Concern of typo or error

The reference to injection of tuberculin in the following seems likely to be off. Tuberculin is a protein, the injection of which does not cause disease. I suspect that the intended term was tuberculosis but I cannot access the primary material.

The section: In 1908, three Philadelphia researchers infected dozens of children with tuberculin at the St. Vincent's House orphanage in Philadelphia, causing permanent blindness in some of the children and painful lesions and inflammation of the eyes in many of the others. In the study they refer to the children as "material used".[14]

72.33.93.97 (talk) 03:20, 29 November 2013 (UTC)Kraig

"Injection" is probably wrong. The researchers were using tuberculin to diagnose tuberculosis, which is (or was) the standard method. The unethical issue, if any, was testing methods of applying tuberculin, including applying it topically to the eye. Here's the source material: http://books.google.com/books?id=8IxHBvw85DgC&pg=PA105&lpg=PA105&dq=Roger+Cooter+tuberculin&source=bl&ots=7_Apr9evH_&sig=xYqaZR7lY6s6l_48Lss_FRXOrKo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=wSCgUrT_H8PtkQfrroHYCA&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Roger%20Cooter%20tuberculin&f=false Fitzaubrey (talk) 06:50, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Serratia marcescens over the city of San Francisco

I have reason to doubt the accuracy the sources that state only serratia marcescens was used as most of the primary documents state that Bacillus globigii (Agent BG) and Florescent Particles (FP) were used in this test. The primary docs are not gospel but they go into great detail explaining why BG was used and the permission from civil authorities was not requested follow up never done.page US Project Deseret in Canadian Archives with references pp. 276-282Johnvr4 (talk) 21:57, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Proposal to include the current status on mind reading and human body control

I propose to include the following updates at the end of section "U.S. government research" of chapter "Psychological and torture experiments".

Noam Chomsky identified ten media manipulation strategies. The last strategy on his list is called "Getting to know the individuals better than they know themselves":

Over the past 50 years, advances of accelerated science has generated a growing gap between public knowledge and those owned and operated by dominant elites. Thanks to biology, neurobiology and applied psychology, the system has enjoyed a sophisticated understanding of human beings, both physically and psychologically. The system has gotten better acquainted with the common man more than he knows himself. This means that, in most cases, the system exerts greater control and great power over individuals, greater than that of individuals about themselves.

Bogdan Alexandru Caprarescu published a document called "The Secret Organized Crime" in which he accuses an international criminal organization composed of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI), and presumably other secret services of many crimes including mind reading and human body control. Caprarescu witnesses that CIA and SRI read the thoughts of people and recorded the thoughts of people at least from 1996 to the present. Caprarescu witnesses that CIA and SRI control the following systems of the human body: nervous, cardiovascular, respiratory, gastrointestinal, and urogenital.

Caprasescu's theory does not seem to be coming from a reliable source, and I can't find any RS that back it up. So this theory shouldn't appear anywhere on Wikipedia unless reliable sources can be found supporting it (doubtful). Chomsky's theory, on the other hand, might be valid on the article "propaganda" or something, but not here (it's not about medical experiments). -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 18:52, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

"In the United States"

The article references events that took place in Guatemala, which is not in the United States. Amnion (talk) 00:34, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

That is a good point. Actually its not clear what many of these things have to do with one another, why should independent physicians testing surgical techniques in the 1840s be discussed alongside CIA mind control experiments in the 1950s? This article is pretty much WP:SYNTH.AioftheStorm (talk) 03:37, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps the title of the entry should be changed to ...sponsored by the United States Government to more accurately describe the subject.Johnvr4 (talk) 14:19, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs related court cases and rulings

Courts Rule for Veterans in Chemical Exposure Cases (July 06, 2015). Johnvr4 (talk) 12:23, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

St. Louis Tests

The US Army released a potentially dangerous fluorescent powder into the air of St. Louis. [1] 216.146.231.6 (talk) 10:37, 8 October 2015 (UTC)Dave

Nice article. You should feel free to add this to the article yourself. NickCT (talk) 00:55, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Why Stanley Milgram's experiment?

Why is it Stanley Milgram's experiment in this page? I think it was not an unethical experiment, since everybody was consensual. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.50.48.110 (talk) 18:09, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Rather than continuing my back-and-forth reverting with TechBear, I am opening a discussion here. I object to the Milgram experiments being listed on a page titled "unethical human experimentation." They were controversial, yes, and they were not a minor part of the move toward IRB review of human research, but I am not aware that there is anything like a consensus of quality sources that the experiments themselves were actually unethical. Adding a citation needed tag does not solve the problem, because the problem is not that the factual information about the experiments is wrong or unverifiable. The problem is that by listing the experiment on this page we assert in Wikipedia's voice that it was an ethical experiment, and I don't believe the consensus of sources supports that assertion. I could be satisfied by an authoritative source stating that Milgram's experiment violated ethical standards in force at the time it was conducted, or that Milgram was officially sanctioned or censured for ethical violation in relations to these experiments by any body duly empowered to so sanction or censure him. I don't believe these sources exist, however. -Starke Hathaway (talk) 16:56, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Please note that modern ethical standards regarding human medical experimentation did not really exist until 1964 and the Declaration of Helsinki. The international discussion that led to the Declaration was started in response to the Nuremberg Code drawn up in preparation for Nazi war trials as an ad hoc guideline to determine who did and who did not commit crimes against humanity. The United States did not have any consistent standards for human experimentation until the of the Common Rule in 1981. The Milgram experiment took place in 1961, before there was any ethical standard recognized under law. If this is your reason for excluding mention of it in this article, then pretty much all of the article will have to go as well. Is that really what you want? This article states in the second paragraph under "Pathogens, disease, and biological warfare agents - Late 19th century" gives three references that deliberately infecting children with gonorrhea to study the disease was common in the late 19th and early 20th century. I think it is safe to say that it was common because such research was not considered unethical at the time. Should mention of that be removed, too?

Past consensus has defined "unethical human experimentation" as being unethical according to today's standard, in light of the international agreements of the Declaration of Helsinki (which has been amended several times since it was first written) and in light of current US laws and standards. Milgram's experiment raised a good deal of controversy when its results were published, and such an experiment today would be impossible to get past an ethical review board. For these reasons, past consensus has held that his experiment is an example of unethical human experimentation. I agree that an explicit citation would be helpful, and the proper way to get one is to flag the paragraph in question. TechBear | Talk | Contributions 01:05, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

Claim that the CIA spread Whooping Cough in 1955 killing 12 people

I first learned of this claim at Metabunk, the site quoted as expressing doubts. Having looked into all the sources cited on Wikipedia and on Metabunk, it appears that there is only one original source for this claim; San Francisco Chronicle, December 17, 1979, p.5

The three sources cited all rely entirely on that original source, with no additional sources of evidence; 1. Blum, William (2006). Rogue state: a guide to the world's only superpower. Zed Books. pp. 150–151. ISBN 978-1-84277-827-2

2. Michael Parenti, The Sword and the Dollar: Imperialism, Revolution, and the Arms Race, St. Martins Press, 1989, pp.74–81, Excerpt available online at:[1] (Retrieved February 18, 2010)

3. Biological Warfare and the National Security State: A Chronology, Tom Burghardt

Thus Mick West at Metabunk seems to be correct when he writes that;

″Where the reference (#15 of chapter 15) is:

15. San Francisco Chronicle, December 17, 1979, p.5

Which leads us to this UPI story:

So the entire story seems to be based on a propaganda campaign by the Church of Scientology. They did not even claim to have any direct evidence that anything was spray, simply some accounts of an unknown quantity of bacteria, and a bunch of unrelated things like animal cages. They noticed this was a year when the whooping cough cases were higher than the last year, so they tried to paint a picture.

So there's no really evidence of what did, or did not happen. But it's nowhere near as clear cut as the Wikipedia references claim.″

The San Francisco Chronicle is behind a pay wall, but Mick West shows an image of the printed story referred to by the other sources at https://www.metabunk.org/data/MetaMirrorCache/contrailscience.com_skitch_cia_20120704_132427.jpg

So, to summarise:

There is only one original source, the Church of Scientology, who did not provide any supporting evidence for their claim. The existing wording gives the false impression that there are three independent sources for the claim, but that is untrue: all rely entirely on the newspaper report of the Church of Scientology’s reported claim. Thus the present wording gives a false impression of multiple support and is misleading and not NPOV for that reason.

I suggest the following rewording, which acknowledges that the claim was made, and describes its source accurately and neutrally.

″The San Francisco Chronicle, December 17, 1979, p.5 reported a claim by the Church of Scientology that the CIA conducted an open-air biological warfare experiment in 1955 near Tampa, Florida and elsewhere in Florida with whooping cough bacteria.[50] It was alleged that the experiment tripled the whooping cough infections in Florida to over one-thousand cases and caused whooping cough deaths in the state to increase from one to 12 over the previous year. This claim has been cited in a number of later sources, although these added no further supporting evidence. [47][48][49] ″

I'm posting this in talk to invite comments before making this edit. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Intilektyule (talk • contribs) 10:28, 9 May 2016 (UTC) Intilektyule (talk) 15:42, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

Isn't the title technically a POV issue?

The term "unethical" isn't a definite fact. It depends on what system of ethics you're going by, and it's a matter of opinion how good or bad any system is. While any reasonable person would agree that the stuff in this article is unethical (or at least most of it; I didn't read the whole thing so some of it might be okay) isn't it still technically non-neutral language? What are your thoughts on this? flarn2006 [u t c] time: 06:23, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Thoughts on this: No.

Excerpt from your above statement: "while any reasonable person would agree that the stuff in this article is unethical[...]"

You have just accepted the premise that we can know what a reasonable person is, and that there is at least a broad cluster of opinions that could be considered "reasonable" as opposed to those which are "unreasonable". Here we reasonably title the article Unethical human experimentation in the United States.

If you want to represent dissenting opinions regarding what is or is not unethical, write up a "Justifications made by or on behalf of those who conducted human experiments deemed unethical" section and stick it at or near the end of the article. Sources needed, obviously. Speculative reasoning about ethics could be worked in but it needs to be the sourced opinion of an existing, say, scholar... or something written up by government or corporate lawyers or analysts in their own institutions' defense.

If you want to express your original thoughts on this subject, do so on your own elsewhere and wait to see if someone would like to cite your work as a reputable source.

In any event, Good luck writing! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.89.130.71 (talk) 18:07, 24 February 2017‎ (UTC)

Provide government agencies or otherwise that protect the public from unethical practices in the medical field or otherwise.

This may not be a forum but I cannot say how barbaric and futile it is for person or institution to randomly expose people to something adverse and expect to determine a result other than injury is beyond my compression. It seems more like a disguised form of torture from a covert sadist. That is what war is isn't it. Only it is overt. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.174.185.248 (talk) 05:10, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Does the "Third Wave" Experiment qualify?

The_Third_Wave_(experiment)

(1) It was a psychological/sociological experiment upon 15 year old high school students. (2) The students did not give their prior, informed consent (and neither did their parents). (3) The only way to "opt out" was to be banished (i.e., ostracized by the teacher and participating classmates). (4) The teacher/experimenter was an active participant in the "experiment." There was no objective, dispassionate observer to monitor the experiment.

Those are just some of the problems I can think of off of the top of my head.

I do not know if anyone tried to reproduce the "experiment," and, if they did, what sort of results they got. It, like the now discredited Stanford Prisoner Experiment, has been promoted throughout the world (this one via TV, novel, film and even musical).

Phantom in ca (talk) 23:05, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Surgical Experiments section, Sims

The writer of this section states (as of Apr 18, 2018 version) "The women—one of whom was operated on 30 times—eventually died from infections resulting from the experiments." This is in conflict with the Wikipedia article on Sims that, while stating that some of the slave women did indeed have multiple procedures, in his autobiography he wrote that he successfully treated them and they "returned to their plantations", thus not dead "from infections". Additionally, the assertion that they did not consent to the surgeries is called into question by his description of the events in two reputable publications of the time (noted in article) where he noted that the women were "given" to him "by their owners" (horrific, yes) but followed with the statement "I agreeing to perform no operation without the full consent of the patients". It should be emphasized that the condition these women had (and one that many women in developing countries suffer today, untreated) had no successful treatment before Sims' work, and there is good evidence that the women were eager for him to succeed -- the condition greatly effects quality of life for those effected. One should also bear in mind the time period when all this occurred: prior to the Civil War, when medical treatments often were 'trial and error', and surgical procedures were generally barbaric, last ditch attempts to help someone in desperate condition.

1940 etc. wrong, no such thing as stutter or not, or monster about it, say/can say any no matter what and any is ok. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lyhendy (talk • contribs) 05:18, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Usefulness and credibility

While it is in everybody's interest that such experiments be known and never repeated, I am afraid there is a wrong approach in many sections.

For instance, an unbiased description should include the scientific lessons learned, if any. These wouldn't justify the tests, obviously, but would prevent the reader from thinking that the writer had neglected to mention them on purpose, just to sound more shocking. This is fine (perhaps) if you are writing in a tabloid, but not in a would-be enclyclopedia.

Second, sometimes there is so little information: "Starting around 2004 and through the Obama administration, the Environmental Protection Agency was charged with human experiments"? I imagine the EPA was "charged with carrying out experiments", not really "charged with experiments"... But the point is, charged by whom? Where - in a newspaper or in court? What sort of experiments? Etc. As it is, it's utterly useless.

Finally, how can I take seriously an article where someone wrote "In 1950, researchers at the Cleveland City Hospital (...) injected people with spinal anesthesia"? Spinal anaesthesia is a procedure, not something you squirt into a patient. I know one doesn't have to be a doctor to write medical articles here, but one ought to have SOME idea of what one is talking about. This sort of thing will easily discredit even serious contributions.

Absit invidia verbo - No offence meant - but I'am afraid this means that some will trust Wikipedia even when they shoudn't, and others will refuse to regard it as a reliable source even when it is. 79.45.200.207 (talk) 22:25, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

YOUR SIDE OF ANYTHING...

WHO are the people? And who constituted us as Americans with RIGHTS? (Fact or opinion, knowledge with power or references from electronics?) DRAMA BRINGS CROWDS ~ UNEXCEPTED TRUTH IS LABELED CRAZY ...Don’t play the game and be mad when the other team takes over. I learned to understand the meaning of NIGGAS BE ACTING LIKE BITCHES....MINE PUSSY DREW MILLIONS BEHIND LIES crawling from all directions.... WHATS YO STATUS???? I want feedback from anyone about anything before I die because NOBODY GAVE ME A CHANCE TO SPEAK WITHOUT JUDGMENT ((( I would’ve shamed them fashion,,they know))) SPEAK UP WORLD!!! Anything on yo mind??? My5514kil? (talk) 04:33, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Remove Nevada explosions

Recommend the following should be removed because this was not a study and it does not say it was done for this purpose. This is just something that happened and is semi related to the section. "In 1957, atmospheric nuclear explosions in Nevada, which were part of Operation Plumbbob were later determined to have released enough radiation to have caused from 11,000 to 212,000 excess cases of thyroid cancer among U.S. citizens who were exposed to fallout from the explosions, leading to between 1,100 and 21,000 deaths.[89]" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.241.218.200 (talk) 20:49, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Facebook

Shouldn't Facebook be on this page for gaslighting their users without informed consent? https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/30/facebook-emotion-study-breached-ethical-guidelines-researchers-say 2403:5800:3200:8300:F89E:D5DF:D08C:7105 (talk) 17:58, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Lauretta Bender

I'm not sure she should be included here. Informed consent was not the norm during her time period (which does not excuse the actions of others during the same eras). But I think we should make a distinction between unethical experiments where researchers purposefully caused harm or introduced substances to see their effects from the experimental treatments that Dr. Bender performed. At that time, autism was poorly understood and was called "childhood schizophrenia". It was thought to be a precursor to adult schizophrenia. Her studies helped better understand autism and the electroshock treatments were done in an attempt to help these patients. Nowadays, ECT has a negative stigma, but at that time it was another therapeutic tool.

The point I'm trying to make is that there's a difference between experiments where actions to healthy or sick people caused harm (and were done without any intention to help) and honest experimental treatments used because there were no other known options at the time. Informed consent was not the same back then but I would consider an experiment to be ethical for its time if it made sure that participants understood the risks, so experimental treatments without the patient's knowledge or consent aren't ok either. As far as I can tell, Dr. Bender didn't violate either of those criteria--the treatments she gave were based on the extent of knowledge at that time, with the intention of helping the patient, and with patient/guardian consent.

In a related note, the source used for Dr. Bender (Truthout, The hidden tragedy of the CIA's experiments on children) is a bit biased. There's definitely good info in there and there are incidents of unethical behavior by other researchers but as far as Dr. Bender is concerned, it only notes the ECT and insulin shock therapies she performed and ties her to people who did unethical things. She's painted as a villain but, even by the facts presented in the article itself, I don't see that conclusion. I didn't want to jump ahead and make changes to that section of the article without posting this up here first. Jasonkwe (talk) 19:33, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

2008 report

"According to the 2008 report by the U.S. Congressional Research Service, "Developments in biotechnology, including genetic engineering, may produce a wide variety of live agents and toxins that are difficult to detect and counter; and new chemical warfare agents and mixtures of chemical weapons and biowarfare agents are being developed . . . Countries are using the natural overlap between weapons and civilian applications of chemical and biological materials to conceal chemical weapon and bioweapon production." was removed for lack of source. I have added it back and added the source under "Government documents" which directly links to the US government report. https://2009-2017.state.gov/documents/organization/52113.pdf 2600:8800:2C16:3600:D8F0:4736:FB01:8142 (talk) 15:51, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Tech experiments with Social-Behavioral studies

Kinda impressed nobody has mentioned any of the Labs in mobile device operating systems.. the Groups, Teams , Projects, Testers (Alpha-Delta) / Fish and other aquatic references , OR Birds (Finch like Canary).... Toward tethering your screen to the unreferenced first paragraph found.

Anyone else wish they were happier not knowing? 24.19.141.129 (talk) 17:18, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Ongoing experiments

The article currently includes the sentence "Such tests have been performed throughout American history, but some of them are ongoing." Looking at the page history I found that the second half-sentence has been changed between the current version and "but most of them were performed during the 20th century" several times; sometimes it was even changed to "but most of them are ongoing". Since no citation is given and the article doesn't mention any ongoing experiments (if I didn't miss anything) I have added a "citation needed" tag.

C. Scheler (talk) 14:32, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

The scope of this article is too broad

The scope of this article is currently every instance of unethical human experimentation in the history of the United States which, to my understanding, violates WP:SYNTH. A much better scope would be restricting it to just unethical experimentation related to the American government MRN2electricboogaloo (talk) 05:08, 28 July 2023 (UTC)