

Unethical human experimentation in the United States - dbbolton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_States

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mjhoy
The experiment on pregnant mothers in Tennessee is just awful. One article
cited [1] reads:

> During the 1940s, 800 pregnant women, the poor patrons of a pre-natal clinic
> at Vanderbilt University, were given a "cocktail" including a tracer dose of
> radioactive iron. The object of the experiment was to determine the iron
> requirements of pregnant women. Ongoing lawsuits point to a higher-than-
> usual incidence of malignancies in the children of the women subjected.

[1]:
[http://news.psu.edu/story/141518/1996/03/01/research/subject...](http://news.psu.edu/story/141518/1996/03/01/research/subjected-
science)

------
caycep
Nowadays, it's pretty regulated. Which makes smaller, pilot projects more of a
hassle, but not impossible. You just have to be persistent with the paperwork,
and luck out with an IRB or IACUC (for animals) that has good, well-informed
members, and not a bunch of incompetents riding on their high horse.

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kens
On the other side, you have scientists who do dangerous experiments on
themselves: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-
experimentation_in_medicin...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-
experimentation_in_medicine)

For example, Dr. Jesse Lazear helped confirm that mosquitoes transmit yellow
fever by letting infected mosquitoes bite himself and then dying of yellow
fever.

And then there's Dr. Werner Forssmann who developed cardiac catheterization by
putting a catheter in his arm and guiding it into his own heart. He then
walked up the stairs to the X-ray department to get a picture as proof. He got
fired for doing this, but later got the Nobel Prize.

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munin
which then lead to:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_review_board](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_review_board)

------
contextual
I'm working on a project to create a more humane channel of scientific
discovery using human volunteer testers from around the world.

It's collaborative like open sourcing, but I call it "open suffering". Many
hands make light work, as they say.

Visit [http://selfexperiments.com](http://selfexperiments.com) to find out
more. I can be contacted using the email in my profile. I have several
interesting experiments in the works.

