Article Highlights
Welsh, C. (2009,16 June). Outlaw nonconsensual human experiments now. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
· Throughout the Cold War, the U.S.
government experimented on American citizens without their knowledge.
· A 1995 government report called for the
prohibition of such human-subject experimentation without informed consent.
· Yet today, some officials still have the
power to waive regulations requiring informed consent in classified government
experiments.
So
while it seems crazy, it's true: Today, in a country that for the last eight years has been defined by
questionable intelligence-gathering techniques and interrogation methods,
the U.S. government is no more restricted in carrying out nonconsensual, classified
research on human subjects than it was after World War II. Thus, it's time for
the Obama administration to reexamine the guidelines for classified
experimentation on human subjects and close any loopholes that would allow a
person to be unknowingly subject to experimentation.
…It's
time, with a new administration that condemns torture of any kind, to establish
regulations governing all human-subject protections in classified
experiments and to ensure that no
person, regardless of position, can take away a person's right to consent.
Welsh, C. (2009,16 June). Outlaw nonconsensual human experiments now. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
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