ABSTRACT
The career of Henry Beecher provided few clues that he would be the one to expose in most compelling fashion how the researchers in the post-World War II decades abused their discretion. Unlike many whistle-blowers, Beecher stood at the top of his profession. Beecher was so highly regarded that when in the late 1930s Harvard and the Massachusetts General Hospital sought to professionalize the field of anesthesiology, they gave him the assignment. Beecher's concern for research ethics also drew on his personal experiences. He was both a committed investigator and one who was fully prepared to use his laboratory skills to promote societal ends. Beecher delivered a paper on the ethics of clinical research, which went beyond discussions of general principles to cite specific cases. Beecher's strategy was to turn the Brook Lodge presentation into a professional journal article that documented the ethical dilemmas in human experimentation by describing actual research protocols.
