1714: Charles Maitland, Smallpox

U.S. Supreme Court upheld a Virginia forced sterilization statute of people considered “genetically unfit.” Harvard-educated eugenicist, Oliver Wendell Holmes’ infamous declaration, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough. . .” resulted in the forced sterilization not only of Carrie Buck of Charlottesville, Virginia, who was falsely “diagnosed” as mentally deficient and…

The Hippocratic medical ethics oath is attributed to Hippocrates, and was adopted as a guide to the  medical profession conduct throughout the ages and still used in the graduation ceremonies of many medical schools. In essence, the Hippocratic Oath: “Primum non nocere” (“First do no harm” or “Above all, do…

In Pennsylvania, 146 children were inoculated with syphilis in several hospitals (Sierra, 2011); and in Philadelphia’s St. Vincent’s House researchers “tested” 15 infants at with tuberculin resulting in several children becoming permanently blind. This atrocity was recorded by the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.

William C Black MD conducted unethical medical experiments on children. He wrote a report about an experiment in which he had infected a 12-month old baby with herpes. Francis Payton Rous, editor of the Journal of Experimental Medicine, rejected Black’s manuscript and wrote an editorial in the Journal stating: “I cannot…

Biomedical research in Germany was considered the most advanced in the world — both in its development and its ethics standards. Berlin Code of Ethics (1900) guaranteed that “all medical interventions for other than diagnostic, healing, and immunization purposes, regardless of other legal or moral authorization are excluded under all…