ABSTRACT
In June I966, Henry Beecher, Dorr Professor of Research in Anesthesia, published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) his analysis of "Ethics and Clinical Research" and thereby joined the ranks of such noted muckrakers as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Upton Sinclair, and Rachael Carson. Beecher's most significant, and most controversial, conclusion was that "unethical or questionably ethical procedures are not uncommon" among researchers–that is, a disregard for the rights of human subjects was widespread. A fuller treatment of research ethics came from the English philosopher and scientist Roger Bacon. To Bacon the trade-off was worth making: the human body was so noble a material that therapeutics would have to suffer deficiencies and errors. Human experimentation made its first significant impact on medical knowledge in the eighteenth century, primarily through the work of the English physician Edward Jenner, and his research on a vaccination against smallpox exemplifies both the style and technique that would predominate for the next 150 years.
