ABSTRACT
During the first, singularly important period, lasting roughly from 1947 to 1981, the ancient tradition of weak protectionism, which granted enormous discretion to physician experimenters, began to break down. The seemingly innocent endorsement of "prior review by institutional associates" was the most significant single departure from the weakly protectionist tradition to a process that finally yielded the moderately protectionist system we have today. The Surgeon General's policy was hardly typical of contemporary attitudes, however, and the practice it sought to implement is one we are still trying to effect. The subsequent federal panel appointed to review the study, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study Ad Hoc Panel, concluded that penicillin therapy should have been made available to the participants by 1953. There is nonetheless a moral hazard in the strong protectionism that aims to supplant the scientist's virtue.
