ABSTRACT
Introduction The history of ‘research ethics’ is practically synonymous with medical and scientifi c research. Prominent high-profi le scandals in the United States and United Kingdom, which have helped to shape this history, include the ill-fated testing of the thalidomide drug during the 1960s, the four-decade-long Tuskegee syphilis study which ended in the early 1970s, and the retention of the hearts of dead children at hospitals in Bristol and Liverpool in the 1990s. Increasing regulation of research since the 1960s has been largely prompted by these highprofi le scandals, and has impacted signifi cantly on professional perceptions of what ‘research ethics’ means. This tends to be defi ned, almost exclusively, as about the (mis)treatment of human ‘subjects’.
