1973: Final Report of Tuskegee Syphilis Study

The CIA begins its secret study of LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) purchased from Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, as a potential weapon for use by American intelligence. The CIA in consultation with Sandoz explored LSD’s possible defensive and offensive uses. Both civilian and military human subjects were used, most without their knowledge. Read…

1963–1973: “Reproductive radiation experiments” were conducted on 64 prison inmates by Dr. C. Alvin Paulsen (University of Washington) under a private contract with the Atomic Energy Commission (now the Energy Department). Read more * Radiation experiments.

1967: British physician Maurice Pappworth published Human Guinea Pigs: Experimentation on Man; he was far less circumspect than Beecher. He identified researchers by name and provided their institutional affiliations, stating bluntly: “No doctor, however great his capacity or original his ideas, has the right to choose martyrs for science or…

Chester M. Southam, MD, a noted immunologist at Sloan-Kettering Institute sought to study the human immunity response to cancer. He obtained funding from the government and injected live cancer cells into 14 patients with advanced cancer and into healthy convicts at Ohio State Prison. The study in prisoners was designed…

1974: President Nixon signed the National Research Act establishes National Commission for the Protection of Human subjects, requiring Public Health Service to promulgate regulations for the protection of human subjects. Title 45 of the Code of Federal Regulations, later known as “The Common Rule,” requires the appointment and utilization of…

1941–1945: U.S. Committee on Medical Research (CMR) was dedicated to wartime medicine; it funded and coordinated 137 institutions in the US that conducted research — including chemical warfare agents and prevention of infectious diseases tested on prisoners and children. CMR-funded infectious disease experiments: institutionalized children were used as “canaries in…