Thursday, May 9, 2013

Welsh, "Outlaw Nonconsensual Human Experiments Now"

Article Highlights

·      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.

Outlaw nonconsensual human experiments now. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

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