live human experiments

11 Scariest Human Experiments Ever, Explained

Human experimentation evokes images straight out of a science fiction horror story. Even if horror story scenarios belong to the realm of fiction, some experiments involved horrific risks and hazards.

These practices are not only unethical but also illegal. Some of them exposed individuals to hazardous substances and physical or emotional abuse, leaving them vulnerable to harm in different contexts.

Here are 11 of the scariest human experiments ever conducted.

1. the milgram experiment.

The Milgram Experiment was led by psychologist Stanley Milgram in the 1960s at Yale University. He wanted to investigate how far individuals can go with complying with instructions from authority figures, even if they conflict with their own moral beliefs.

This is how participants started to administer electric shocks to other people. What they didn’t know was that the shocks were simulated. Even with their belief that the shocks were real, some participants continued to administer the shocks.

2. The Monster Study

A psychologist from the University of Iowa conducted a psychological study in 1939 called The Monster Study. Wendell Johnson is the name of the initiator, and he examined the impact of stuttering on orphan children. He wanted to prove how positive speech therapy helps, and he collected a group of twenty-two participants who were randomly divided into two groups. While one group received positive speech therapy, the other group experienced negative speech therapy. They were discouraged and assaulted with verbal criticism to reflect the development of stuttering issues in individuals.

This experiment was heavily criticized for its ethical implications, and it managed to cause psychological distress to the children. Moreover, it was conducted with no consent from legal representatives or guardians.

3. The Stateville Penitentiary Malaria Study

One of the most unethical studies ever conducted was the Stateville Penitentiary Malaria Study, which took place during the 1940s. This penitentiary in Illinois aimed to examine the effects of malaria by infecting incarcerated people with the malaria parasite. Along with this, various drugs were administered to see their effectiveness in treating the infection, and this led to a successful experiment that made them understand the treatment strategies for malaria.

Even if it had contributed to the knowledge of this serious disease, the study is a whole ethical debate due to using prisoners as involuntary participants and exploiting vulnerable individuals for scientific purposes.

4. Operation Midnight Climax

A covert CIA program took place during the 1950s and 1960s as a part of the MKUltra project. It worked as a setup house in New York and San Francisco, where they seduced unsuspecting individuals using prostitutes. Once stepping into the house, they were administered hallucinogen drugs to document the behavioral effects.

During the experiment, a lot of various psychedelics were tested on unwitting subjects to get deep insights into the psychological effects of these substances. This unethical experiment persisted until it was exposed to the public in the 1970s, and this led to its discontinuation.

5. Operation ARTICHOKE

This operation was part of a bigger project called the MKUltra project that the CIA initiated to find out more about the impact of psychological manipulation on humans. They focused on finding the use of hypnosis and any other form of psychological manipulation for behavior changes and intelligence gathering.

This operation functioned by extracting information from individuals in interrogations that was then used to evaluate the effectiveness of hypnosis or other psychological methods. They investigated hypnosis effects on memory or behavior to ease clandestine operations. The program managed to show utility, but it generated controversy, and it eventually ended due to ethical concerns.

6. The Standford Prison Experiment

In 1971, at Standford University, Phillip Zimbardo conducted a study to investigate the impact of authority and power on individuals. A prison environment was simulated, and twenty-four male participants were assigned the roles of prisoners or guards for two weeks.

This study caused severe psychological distress to its participants because the ones in the guard’s role exhibited unethical and extreme acts. It managed to reveal how individuals tend to conform to assigned social roles and how they try to reach expectations even if abusive and harmful behavior is involved. The experiment was halted prematurely because it was difficult to keep it under control, but it was regarded as a classic illustration of obedience and conformity that can change an individual’s behavior.

7. The sexual reassignment experiment

Gender transition involves medical procedures and therapy to relate a person’s physical features to their gender identity. It can involve hormone therapy, chest, or facial surgeries, along with other forms of treatment.

On this topic, there are instances of gender reassembly occurring from birth. One tragic case is that of David Reimer, a Canadian citizen born male in 1965. Because of a medical error during circumcision, doctors decided to perform gender reassignment surgery, which led to raising him as a female. Around 9 to 11 years old, Reimer managed to realize his identity and started to live as a man from 15 onwards. This whole experience caused him severe depression, which tragically led to the act of taking his own life.

8. The Aversion Project

During apartheid, Dr. Aubrey Levin practiced a series of experiments classified as medical torture. They encompassed harmful and discredited actions claiming to treat homosexuality among South African soldiers. It’s crucial to notice that homosexuality is not a medical condition; therefore, it can’t be cured by medical interventions like treating an illness.

9. Unit 731

Unit 731 is known as a research facility during World War II of the Imperial Japanese Army where horrific human experiences have been conducted. It was located in Pingfang District, China, and the most horrible war crimes that were committed there are attributed to Japan.

They conducted experiments on live prisoners, war prisoners, and civilians from China, Korea, Mongolia, and Russia. The experiments that took place here were meant to test chemical and biological weapons. Even if the real scale of atrocities is uncertain, it’s claimed that thousands of people suffered cruel treatment and even lost their lives due to study activities.

10. Mentally disabled children infected with hepatitis

Willbrook State School was a government institution for children with mental disabilities in Staten Island, New York. Investigations revealed poor hygiene, overcrowding, and insufficient staff that led to conditions that equated to cruel treatment. A disturbing report shows that Willowbrook staff exposed the children to hepatitis, intentionally trying to study the virus’s effects. Multiple lawsuits and additional investigations took place and the school was closed in 1987.

However, the unethical experiments had lasting consequences, and they affected the lives of innocent children in a way that couldn’t be stopped along with the school’s activity.

11. Tuskegee Syphilis Study

A study conducted by the US Public Health Service in Tuskegee, Alabama, was meant to investigate the untreated progression of syphilis among poor African American men living in rural environments who were infected.

During the study, they had no clue about their syphilis diagnosis, and they were denied treatment even if the scientists discovered the penicillin standard cure in 1940. This is an example of unethical medical research and the racism of this era.

The result of this study was the implementation of changes in clinical research, such as formulation guidelines for informed consent and the establishment of Institutional Review Boards that started to inspect the ethical standards of clinical studies.

If you want to find out more on this topic, we recommend this book in Kindle edition that you can get from Amazon: Experimenting with Humans and Animals: From Aristotle to CRISPR (Hopkins Introductions to the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine.

Read next: 5 Shocking Things That Happen During Coma: See How Your Body Reacts to It

Most Popular

10 Genetic Quirks You Didn’t Know You Got From Your Parents

7 Coastal Cities That Could Sink by 2100

Nature’s Little Helpers: 6 Surprising Beneficial Pests

In Case of Radiation Emergency, CDC Advises You to Do This!

14 Easy Sustainable Practices Recommended by Scientists

Unlocking the Mystery of Leap Years

8 Solar Panel Benefits: Are They REALLY Worth It?

Eye Drop Recall: 27 Meds Thousands Took, Pulled From the Market

SCARY: Aliens Might Visit Us by 2029 – Scientists Say

5 Shocking Things That Happen During Coma: See How Your Body Reacts to It

7 Scientific Reasons Why Zombies Can’t Actually Exist

Military Robots in Combat: Is It Ethical? And What Are the 6 Terrifying Risks?

7 Surprising Things We’ve Recently Learned About the Brain

This Fungi Creates Zombies (and Other 8 Interesting Facts About Them)

Privacy Policy
Terms and Conditions
Do not sell my personal information
Unsubscribe
CA PRIVACY POLICY
REQUEST TO KNOW
REQUEST TO DELETE

For Clinicians
For Medical Students
For Scientists
Our Victories
Internships
Annual & Financial Reports
Barnard Medical Center

Human Experimentation: An Introduction to the Ethical Issues

Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
Share via Email

In January 1944, a 17-year-old Navy seaman named Nathan Schnurman volunteered to test protective clothing for the Navy. Following orders, he donned a gas mask and special clothes and was escorted into a 10-foot by 10-foot chamber, which was then locked from the outside. Sulfur mustard and Lewisite, poisonous gasses used in chemical weapons, were released into the chamber and, for one hour each day for five days, the seaman sat in this noxious vapor. On the final day, he became nauseous, his eyes and throat began to burn, and he asked twice to leave the chamber. Both times he was told he needed to remain until the experiment was complete. Ultimately Schnurman collapsed into unconsciousness and went into cardiac arrest. When he awoke, he had painful blisters on most of his body. He was not given any medical treatment and was ordered to never speak about what he experienced under the threat of being tried for treason. For 49 years these experiments were unknown to the public.

The Scandal Unfolds

In 1993, the National Academy of Sciences exposed a series of chemical weapons experiments stretching from 1944 to 1975 which involved 60,000 American GIs. At least 4,000 were used in gas-chamber experiments such as the one described above. In addition, more than 210,000 civilians and GIs were subjected to hundreds of radiation tests from 1945 through 1962.

Testimony delivered to Congress detailed the studies, explaining that “these tests and experiments often involved hazardous substances such as radiation, blister and nerve agents, biological agents, and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD)....Although some participants suffered immediate acute injuries, and some died, in other cases adverse health problems were not discovered until many years later—often 20 to 30 years or longer.” 1

These examples and others like them—such as the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiments (1932-72) and the continued testing of unnecessary (and frequently risky) pharmaceuticals on human volunteers—demonstrate the danger in assuming that adequate measures are in place to ensure ethical behavior in research.

Tuskegee Studies

In 1932, the U.S. Public Health Service in conjunction with the Tuskegee Institute began the now notorious “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.” The study purported to learn more about the treatment of syphilis and to justify treatment programs for African Americans. Six hundred African American men, 399 of whom had syphilis, became participants. They were given free medical exams, free meals, and burial insurance as recompense for their participation and were told they would be treated for “bad blood,” a term in use at the time referring to a number of ailments including syphilis, when, in fact, they did not receive proper treatment and were not informed that the study aimed to document the progression of syphilis without treatment. Penicillin was considered the standard treatment by 1947, but this treatment was never offered to the men. Indeed, the researchers took steps to ensure that participants would not receive proper treatment in order to advance the objectives of the study. Although, the study was originally projected to last only 6 months, it continued for 40 years.

Following a front-page New York Times article denouncing the studies in 1972, the Assistant Secretary for Health and Scientific Affairs appointed a committee to investigate the experiment. The committee found the study ethically unjustified and within a month it was ended. The following year, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People won a $9 million class action suit on behalf of the Tuskegee participants. However, it was not until May 16, 1997, when President Clinton addressed the eight surviving Tuskegee participants and others active in keeping the memory of Tuskegee alive, that a formal apology was issued by the government.

While Tuskegee and the discussed U.S. military experiments stand out in their disregard for the well-being of human subjects, more recent questionable research is usually devoid of obvious malevolent intentions. However, when curiosity is not curbed with compassion, the results can be tragic.

Unnecessary Drugs Mean Unnecessary Experiments

A widespread ethical problem, although one that has not yet received much attention, is raised by the development of new pharmaceuticals. All new drugs are tested on human volunteers. There is, of course, no way subjects can be fully apprised of the risks in advance, as that is what the tests purport to determine. This situation is generally considered acceptable, provided volunteers give “informed” consent. Many of the drugs under development today, however, offer little clinical benefit beyond those available from existing treatments. Many are developed simply to create a patentable variation on an existing drug. It is easy to justify asking informed, consenting individuals to risk limited harm in order to develop new drug therapies for a condition from which they are suffering or for which existing treatments are inadequate. The same may not apply when the drug being tested offers no new benefits to the subjects because they are healthy volunteers, or when the drug offers no significant benefits to anyone because it is essentially a copy of an existing drug.

Manufacturers, of course, hope that animal tests will give an indication of how a given drug will affect humans. However, a full 70 to 75 percent of drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration for clinical trials based on promising results in animal tests, ultimately prove unsafe or ineffective for humans. 2 Even limited clinical trials cannot reveal the full range of drug risks. A U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) study reports that of the 198 new drugs which entered the market between 1976 and 1985, 102 (52 percent) caused adverse reactions that premarket tests failed to predict. 3 Even in the brief period between January and August 1997, at least 53 drugs currently on the market were relabeled due to unexpected adverse effects. 4

In the GAO study, no fewer than eight of the drugs in question were benzodiazepines, similar to Valium, Librium, and numerous other sedatives of this class. Two were heterocyclic antidepressants, adding little or nothing to the numerous existing drugs of this type. Several others were variations of cephalosporin antibiotics, antihypertensives, and fertility drugs. These are not needed drugs. The risks taken to develop these drugs by trial participants, and to a certain extent by consumers, were not in the name of science, but in the name of market share.

As physicians, we necessarily have a relationship with the pharmaceutical companies that produce, develop, and market drugs involved in medical treatment. A reflective, perhaps critical posture towards some of the standard practices of these companies—such as the routine development of unnecessary drugs—may help to ensure higher ethical standards in research.

Unnecessary Experimentation on Children

Unnecessary and questionable human experimentation is not limited to pharmaceutical development. In experiments at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a genetically engineered human growth hormone (hGH) is injected into healthy short children. Consent is obtained from parents and affirmed by the children themselves. The children receive 156 injections each year in the hope of becoming taller.

Growth hormone is clearly indicated for hormone-deficient children who would otherwise remain extremely short. Until the early 1980s, they were the only ones eligible to receive it; because it was harvested from human cadavers, supplies were limited. But genetic engineering changed that, and the hormone can now be manufactured in mass quantities. This has led pharmaceutical houses to eye a huge potential market: healthy children who are simply shorter than average.

Short stature, of course, is not a disease. The problems short children face relate only to how others react to their height and their own feelings about it. The hGH injection, on the other hand, poses significant risks, both physical and psychological.

These injections are linked in some studies to a potential for increased cancer risk, 5-8 are painful, and may aggravate, rather than reduce, the stigma of short stature. 9,10 Moreover, while growth rate is increased in the short term, it is unclear that the final net height of the child is significantly increased by the treatment.

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine worked to halt these experiments and recommended that the biological and psychological effects of hGH treatment be studied in hormone-deficient children who already receive hGH, and that non-pharmacologic interventions to counteract the stigma of short stature also be investigated. Unfortunately, the hGH studies have continued without modification, putting healthy short children at risk.

Use of Placebo in Clinical Research

Whooping cough, also known as pertussis, is a serious threat to infants, with dangerous and sometimes fatal complications. Vaccination has nearly wiped out pertussis in the U.S. Uncertainties remain, however, over the relative merits and safety of traditional whole-cell vaccines versus newer, acellular versions, prompting the NIH to propose an experiment testing various vaccines on children.

The controversial part of the 1993 experiment was the inclusion of a placebo group of more than 500 infants who get no protection at all, an estimated 5 percent of whom were expected to develop whooping cough, compared to the 1.4 percent estimated risk for the study group as a whole. Because of these risks, this study would not be permissible in the U.S. The NIH, however, insisted on the inclusion of a placebo control and therefore initiated the study in Italy where there are fewer restrictions on human research trials. Originally, Italian health officials recoiled from these studies on ethical as well as practical grounds, but persistent pressure from the NIH ensured that the study was conducted with the placebo group.

The use of double-blind placebo-controlled studies is the “gold standard” in the research community, usually for good reason. However, when a well-accepted treatment is available, the use of a placebo control group is not always acceptable and is sometimes unethical. 11 In such cases, it is often appropriate to conduct research using the standard treatment as an active control. The pertussis experiments on Italian children were an example of dogmatic adherence to a research protocol which trumped ethical concerns.

Placebos, Ethics, and Poorer Nations

The ethical problems that placebo-controlled trials raise are especially complicated in research conducted in economically disadvantaged countries. Recently, attention has been brought to studies conducted in Africa on preventing the transmission of HIV from mothers to newborns. Standard treatment for HIV-infected pregnant women in the U.S. is a costly regimen of AZT. This treatment can save the life of one in seven infants born to women with AIDS. 12 Sadly, the cost of AZT treatment is well beyond the means of most of the world’s population. This troubling situation has motivated studies to find a cost-effective treatment that can confer at least some benefit in poorer countries where the current standard of care is no treatment at all. A variety of these studies is now underway in which a control group of HIV-positive pregnant women receives no antiretroviral treatment.

Such studies would clearly be unethical in the U.S. where AZT treatment is the standard of care for all HIV-positive mothers. Peter Lurie, M.D., M.P.H., and Sidney Wolfe, M.D., in an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine , hold that such use of placebo controls in research trials in poor nations is unethical as well. They contend that, by using placebo control groups, researchers adopt a double standard leading to “an incentive to use as research subjects those with the least access to health care.” 13 Lurie and Wolfe argue that an active control receiving the standard regimen of AZT can and should be compared with promising alternative therapies (such as a reduced dosage of AZT) to develop an effective, affordable treatment for poor countries.

Control Groups and Nutrition

Similar ethical problems are also emerging in nutrition research. In the past, it was ethical for prevention trials in heart disease or other serious conditions to include a control group which received weak nutritional guidelines or no dietary intervention at all. However, that was before diet and lifestyle changes—particularly those using very low fat, vegetarian diets—were shown to reverse existing heart disease, push adult-onset diabetes into remission, significantly lower blood pressure, and reduce the risk of some forms of cancer. Perhaps in the not-too-distant future, such comparison groups will no longer be permissible.

The Ethical Landscape

Ethical issues in human research generally arise in relation to population groups that are vulnerable to abuse. For example, much of the ethically dubious research conducted in poor countries would not occur were the level of medical care not so limited. Similarly, the cruelty of the Tuskegee experiments clearly reflected racial prejudice. The NIH experiments on short children were motivated to counter a fundamentally social problem, the stigma of short stature, with a profitable pharmacologic solution. The unethical military experiments during the Cold War would have been impossible if GIs had had the right to abort assignments or raise complaints. As we address the ethical issues of human experimentation, we often find ourselves traversing complex ethical terrain. Vigilance is most essential when vulnerable populations are involved.

Frank C. Conahan of the National Security and International Affairs Division of the General Accounting Office, reporting to the Subcommittee of the House Committee on Government Operations.
Flieger K. Testing drugs in people. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. September 10, 1997.
U.S. General Accounting Office. FDA Drug Review: Postapproval Risks 1976-85. U.S. General Accounting Office, Washington, D.C., 1990.
MedWatch, U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Labeling changes related to drug safety. U.S. Food and Drug Administration Home Page; http://www.fda.gov/medwatch/safety.htm . September 10, 1997.
Arteaga CL, Osborne CK. Growth inhibition of human breast cancer cells in vitro with an antibody against the type I somatomedin receptor. Cancer Res . 1989;49:6237-6241.
Pollak M, Costantino J, Polychronakos C, et al. Effect of tamoxifen on serum insulin-like growth factor I levels in stage I breast cancer patients. J Natl Cancer Inst . 1990;82:1693-1697.
Stoll BA. Growth hormone and breast cancer. Clin Oncol . 1992;4:4-5.
Stoll BA. Does extra height justify a higher risk of breast cancer? Ann Oncol . 1992;3:29-30.
Kusalic M, Fortin C. Growth hormone treatment in hypopituitary dwarfs: longitudinal psychological effects. Canad Psychiatric Asso J . 1975;20:325-331.
Grew RS, Stabler B, Williams RW, Underwood LE. Facilitating patient understanding in the treatment of growth delay. Clin Pediatr . 1983;22:685-90.
For a more extensive discussion of the ethical status of placebo-controlled trials see especially: Freedman B, Glass KC, Weijer C. Placebo orthodoxy in clinical research II: ethical, legal and regulatory myths. J Law Med Ethics . 1996;24:252-259.
Lurie P, Wolfe SM. Unethical trials of interventions to reduce perinatal transmission of the human immunnodeficiency virus in developing countries. N Engl J Med . 1997:337:12:853.

Controversial New Guidelines Would Allow Experiments On More Mature Human Embryos

Rob Stein, photographed for NPR, 22 January 2020, in Washington DC.

New guidance would ease restrictions on researching embryos in the lab. BSIP/Science Source hide caption

New guidance would ease restrictions on researching embryos in the lab.

For decades, scientists have been prohibited from keeping human embryos alive in their labs for more than 14 days. The prohibition was aimed at avoiding a thicket of ethical issues that would be raised by doing experiments on living human embryos as they continue to develop.

But on Wednesday, an influential scientific society recommended scrapping that blanket taboo, known as the "14-day rule." The International Society for Stem Cell Research released new guideline s that say it could be permissible to study living human embryos in the lab for longer than two weeks.

This guidance will now be considered by regulatory bodies in each country that conducts this type of research to decide what research will be permitted and how. Currently in the U.S., regulatory bodies at universities and other research institutions universally adhere to the 14-day rule. If the new guidance is adopted, it would be a major change.

"When you ask, 'Is this ethically bad?' Well, you also have to put the opposite: Are there ethical issues for not doing research in that period?" says Robin Lovell-Badge of the Crick Institute , who chaired the task force that wrote the guidelines. "In many ways, you could argue it would be unethical not to do it."

Studying embryos as they develop beyond 14 days could help scientists solve many medical problems, including infertility, miscarriages and birth defects, Lovell-Badge and others argue.

"There's very good reasons for doing this research. And people shouldn't be scared about it if there are robust mechanisms of review and oversight," Lovell-Badge says.

While many scientists and bioethicists are welcoming the new guidelines, others criticize them as being far too permissive.

"I think it's deeply troubling," says Dr. Daniel Sulmasy , a bioethicist at Georgetown University. "Now, any sign of respect for the human embryo is gone."

Others are especially concerned that the new guidelines include no clear stopping point for how long a developing embryo could be studied in a lab dish.

"If you don't have any endpoint, could you take embryos to 20 weeks? To 24 weeks? Is viability the only endpoint," asks Hank Greely, a Stanford University bioethicist who otherwise praises the new guidelines. "Is viability even an endpoint?"

Lovell-Badge defends the recommendations.

"I felt that it would be both difficult and a little pointless to propose any new limit, which would be arbitrary, much like 14 days," Lovell-Badge says.

The original cutoff was set at 14 days for a variety of reasons. For example, 14 days is around the time when an embryo starts to develop the first signs of a central nervous system. It's also when an embryo can no longer split into twins. At the time, scientists were far from being able to sustain living embryos in the lab anywhere close to 14 days.

But in recent years scientists have gradually extended how long they can sustain human embryos in lab dishes, increasing pressure from some researchers and bioethicists to revise the rule.

Shots - Health News

Scientists create living entities in the lab that closely resemble human embryos.

At the same time, scientists developed the ability to create "embryoids," which are living entities made from human stem cells that have become increasingly complex and similar to human embryos. That added pressure to extend the rule so scientists could compare these new entities with naturally conceived embryos.

"That period of development between, say, 14 days, which is the current limit, and let's say 28 days, a huge amount is happening. It's a very critical period," Lovell-Badge says.

The guidelines stress such experiments should only be allowed after each country has a robust public debate and the public at large agrees that such research is acceptable. In addition, any experiments must be carefully monitored to make sure the research is absolutely necessary to learn something important, according to the guidelines.

"We're not saying it should now happen. We're saying it's possible for it to happen," Lovell-Badge says.

The guidelines could be especially influential in countries that do not have laws or regulations governing this kind of research.

In the U.S., the federal government is prohibited from funding for research involving human embryos. But that kind of research can be done with private money. And the National Institutes of Health has been waiting for the new guidelines to help decide whether to lift a moratorium on funding research involving chimera embryos.

"We are looking forward to reading the ISSCR guidelines," the NIH said in a statement to NPR. "ISSCR has long been a thoughtful voice for the international stem cell research community, and we will certainly think carefully about their report."

Martin Pera, a stem cell researcher at the Jackson Laboratory who was not involving in writing the guidelines, called them "responsible and well-considered" in an email to NPR. "Adoption of these guidelines by regulatory bodies will ensure that research that has wide-ranging potential to improve human health can proceed with appropriate ethical oversight."

The change in the 14-day rule is just one of a long list of sensitive lines of scientific research the new guidelines address, ranging from human cloning to gene-editing human embryos. Some research, such as human cloning and creating babies from gene-edited embryos, remains off-limits. But the guidelines generally take a more permissive stance, including opening the door to creating gene-edited babies someday if it would be safe and solve an important medical problem.

Scientists Create Early Embryos That Are Part Human, Part Monkey

The guidelines also detail rules that would allow researchers to create chimera embryos for research. These are embryos that are part human, part animal. They're made by injecting human stem cells into animal embryos. Scientists recently announced they had done this with monkey embryos .

The goal is to learn more about basic embryonic development and perhaps someday use these embryos to breed animals such as pigs and cows with human hearts, livers and kidneys for organ transplants. Those entities raise many difficult ethical questions. One concern is that the cells could end up in other parts of the animals' bodies, such as their brains.

"Surely there are some human-animal chimera experiments that are entirely permissible and good. But there are some that would be monstrous," wrote J. Benjamin Hurlbut, a Arizona State University bioethicist, in an email to NPR.

"Do we really need to hark back to Mary Shelley to remind ourselves that the production of monstrosity may well grow out of a misguided sense of the good — combined with the thrill of the power of control over life? What is at stake here if not that?" Hurlbut wrote.

To assuage such concerns, the guidelines recommend a variety of restrictions and steps that should be taken to prevent that from occurring.

"There is a way to genetically engineer both the embryo and the stem cells so that the stem cells will only make a particular organ," says Insoo Hyun, a bioethicist at Harvard and Case Western Reserve universities, who helped write the guidelines. "Nobody wants a chimeric embryo to grow into a part-human, part-animal thing that has human cells from head to toe mixed in."

But the guidelines could conceivably allow a human-monkey embryo to develop inside a monkey's womb. And so those requirements did little to satisfy critics.

"I think we have just not thought through the moral status of these novel beings," says Françoise Baylis, a bioethicist at Dalhousie University in Canada.

"I think a number of people would be, you know, rightfully concerned that, that there are very little constraints on what's happening with the human embryo."

Hurlbut, who called the new guidelines "breathtakingly expansive," agrees.

"What was ethically unthinkable just a few years ago is getting treated as not only permissible but even unproblematic now," Hurlbut says.

"Under these guidelines an oversight committee can deliberate behind closed doors and quietly give its blessing to scientists to impregnate a monkey with a partly human embryo, or to see how far into human development scientists can grow artificially constructed synthetic human embryos in bottles."

Others, however, praise the new guidelines.

"As this is a time of rapid advances in stem cell-based research, it is critical to have a set of guidelines that all researchers can refer to, regardless of the stage of their research," says Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte , a researcher at the Salk Institute, who created the part-human, part-monkey embryos.

human embryos

Every print subscription comes with full digital access

Science News

Living brain tissue experiments raise new kinds of ethical questions.

An ethicist describes the quandaries raised by working with tissue involved in our awareness

At the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, scientists prepare a piece of still-living brain tissue that was just removed during a surgery.

Molly Telfer

A hunger protein reverses anorexia symptoms in mice

abstract person with wavy colors flowing in and out of brain

‘Then I Am Myself the World’ ponders what it means to be conscious

A vial of blood is put into a tube rack, with medical images of a brain in the background.

Alzheimer’s blood tests are getting better, but still have a ways to go

Psilocybin temporarily dissolves brain networks.

a sea lion facing the camera lies on a concrete wall. A person wearing a white jumpsuit and blue gloves is walking toward it

Bird flu has been invading the brains of mammals. Here’s why

A photograph of a mother in a green shirt breastfeeding her infant. She is sitting in a white armchair next to a small, potted plant in front of a white wall and curtained window.

Breastfeeding should take a toll on bones. A brain hormone may protect them

Art of many faceless people standing in a crowd

‘Do I Know You?’ explores face blindness and the science of the mind

This is stock art of a man and a woman clutching their stomachs as if in pain. Most of the image is black, gray and white, but their T-shirts are colored red in the abdomen area, to denote pain.

Pain may take different pathways in men and women

Subscribers, enter your e-mail address for full access to the Science News archives and digital editions.

Not a subscriber? Become one now .

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

View all journals
Explore content
About the journal
Publish with us
Sign up for alerts
25 April 2018

The ethics of experimenting with human brain tissue

Nita A. Farahany 0 ,
Henry T. Greely 1 ,
Steven Hyman 2 ,
Christof Koch 3 ,
Christine Grady 4 ,
Sergiu P. Pașca 5 ,
Nenad Sestan 6 ,
Paola Arlotta 7 ,
James L. Bernat 8 ,
Jonathan Ting 9 ,
Jeantine E. Lunshof 10 ,
Eswar P. R. Iyer 11 ,
Insoo Hyun 12 ,
Beatrice H. Capestany 13 ,
George M. Church 14 ,
Hao Huang 15 &
Hongjun Song 16

Nita A. Farahany is professor of law and philosophy at Duke University, director of the Duke Initiative for Science & Society, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA.

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Henry T. Greely is professor of law, director of the Center for Law and the Biosciences, and director of the Stanford Program in Neuroscience and Society at Stanford University, California, USA.

Steven Hyman is director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University; and Harvard University distinguished service professor in the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

Christof Koch is the chief scientist and president at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, Seattle, Washington, USA.

Christine Grady is chief of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.

Sergiu P. Pașca is assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, USA.

Nenad Sestan is professor of neuroscience, of genetics, of psychiatry, and of comparative medicine at the Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, USA.

Paola Arlotta is professor of stem cell and regenerative biology at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

James L. Bernat is professor of neurology and medicine (active emeritus) at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth in Hanover, New Hampshire, USA.

Jonathan Ting is assistant investigator at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, Seattle, Washington, USA.

Jeantine E. Lunshof is research scientist-ethicist at MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts; ethics consultant to the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA; assistant professor in the Department of Genetics, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands.

Eswar P. R. Iyer is a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University.

Insoo Hyun is associate professor of bioethics and philosophy at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Cleveland, Ohio, USA.

Beatrice H. Capestany is a postdoctoral fellow at the Science, Law, and Policy Lab at the Duke Initiative for Science & Society, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA.

George M. Church is professor of genetics at Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, and Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

Hao Huang is associate professor of radiology at University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA.

Hongjun Song is Perelman professor of neuroscience at University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, USA.

If researchers could create brain tissue in the laboratory that might appear to have conscious experiences or subjective phenomenal states, would that tissue deserve any of the protections routinely given to human or animal research subjects?

Access options

Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals

Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription

24,99 € / 30 days

cancel any time

Subscribe to this journal

Receive 51 print issues and online access

185,98 € per year

only 3,65 € per issue

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Nature 556 , 429-432 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-04813-x

Quadrato, G., Brown, J. & Arlotta, P. Nature Med. 22 , 1220–1228 (2016).

Article PubMed CAS Google Scholar

Pasca, S. P. Nature 553 , 437–445 (2018).

Arlotta, P. Nature Meth. 15 , 27–29 (2018).

Article CAS Google Scholar

Eisenstein, M. Nature Meth. 15 , 19–22 (2018).

Lancaster, M. A. & Knoblich, J. A. Nature Protoc . 9, 2329–2340 (2014).

Qian, X. et al. Cell 165 , 1238–1254 (2016).

Kadoshima, T. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 110 , 20284–20289 (2013).

Birey, F. et al. Nature 545 , 54–59 (2017).

Sloan, S. A. et al. Neuron 95 , 779–790 (2017).

Mariani, J. et al. Cell 162 , 375–390 (2015).

Ye, F. et al. Neuron 96 , 1041–1054 (2017).

Qian, X., Nguyen, H. N., Jacob, F., Song, H. & Ming, G. L. Development 144 , 952–957 (2017).

Quadrato, G. et al. Nature 545 , 48–53 (2017).

Mansour, A. A. et al. Nature Biotechnol . https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.4127 (2018).

Article PubMed Google Scholar

Koch, C., Massimini, M., Boly, M. & Tononi, G. Nature Rev. Neurosci. 17 , 307–321 (2016).

Bourret, R. et al. Stem Cell. Res. Ther. 7 , 87 (2016).

Greely, H. T., Ramos, K. M. & Grady, C. Neuron 92 , 637–641 (2016).

Gray Matters: Integrative Approaches for Neuroscience, Ethics, and Society (Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, 2014); available at https://go.nature.com/2qvm83f

Google Scholar

Gray Matters: Topics at the Intersection of Neuroscience, Ethics, and Society (Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, 2015); available at https://go.nature.com/2vdqx5j

Download references

Reprints and permissions

Method of the Year 2017: Organoids

Neuroscience

Found: a brain-wiring pattern linked to depression

News 04 SEP 24

The hepatitis C virus envelope protein complex is a dimer of heterodimers

Article 04 SEP 24

How rival weight-loss drugs fare at treating obesity, diabetes and more

News 03 SEP 24

Cough or sneeze? How the brain knows what to unleash

News 06 SEP 24

Frontostriatal salience network expansion in individuals in depression

DNA methylation controls stemness of astrocytes in health and ischaemia

Faculty Positions in School of Engineering, Westlake University

The School of Engineering (SOE) at Westlake University is seeking to fill multiple tenured or tenure-track faculty positions in all ranks.

Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China

Westlake University

Postdoctoral Associate- Genetic Epidemiology

Houston, Texas (US)

Baylor College of Medicine (BCM)

NOMIS Foundation ETH Postdoctoral Fellowship

The NOMIS Foundation ETH Fellowship Programme supports postdoctoral researchers at ETH Zurich within the Centre for Origin and Prevalence of Life ...

Zurich, Canton of Zürich (CH)

Centre for Origin and Prevalence of Life at ETH Zurich

13 PhD Positions at Heidelberg University

GRK2727/1 – InCheck Innate Immune Checkpoints in Cancer and Tissue Damage

Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg (DE) and Mannheim, Baden-Württemberg (DE)

Medical Faculties Mannheim & Heidelberg and DKFZ, Germany

Postdoctoral Associate- Environmental Epidemiology

Quick links

Explore articles by subject
Guide to authors
Editorial policies

9 evil medical experiments

Many evil medical experiments have been conducted in the name of science, here are nine of the most horrific.

An SS operating theatre used for evil medical experiments

Separating triplets

Nazi medical experiments, japan's unit 731, the "monster study", the burke and hare murders, surgical experiments on slaves, guatemala syphilis study, the tuskegee study, additional resources:, related links:, bibliography:.

Throughout history a number of evil experiments have been carried out in the name of science. We all know the stereotype of the mad scientist, often a villain in popular culture. Yet in real-life, while science often saves lives, sometimes scientists commit horrific crimes in order to achieve results.

Some are ethical mistakes, lapses of judgement made by people convinced they're doing the right thing. Other times, they're pure evil. Here are nine of the worst experiments on human subjects in history.

Robert Shafran, David Kellman and Eddy Galland sit for a photo at a home in Howard Beach in Queens, New York, on Sept. 28, 1980, after the triplets had been reunited.

In the 1960s and 1970s , clinical psychologists led by Peter Neubauer ran a secret experiment in which they separated twins and triplets from each other and adopted them out as singlets. The experiment, said to have been partly funded by the National Institute of Mental Health , came to light when three identical triplet brothers accidentally found each other in 1980. They had no idea they had siblings.

David Kellman, one of the triplets, felt anger towards the experiment: ''We were robbed of 20 years together,'' said Kellman in the Orlando Sentinel article. His brother, Edward Galland died by suicide in 1995 at his home in Maplewood, New Jersey, according to the LA Times .

The child psychiatrists who headed up the study — Peter Neubauer and Viola Bernard — showed no remorse, according to news reports, going as far as saying they thought they were doing something good for the kids, separating them so they could develop their individual personalities, said Bernard, according to Quillette . As for what Neubauer learned from his secret "evil" experiment, that's anyone's guess, as the results of the controversial study are being stored in an archive at Yale University, and they can't be unsealed until 2066, NPR reported in 2007 . Neubauer published some of his findings in a 1996 book, Nature's Thumbprint: The New Genetics of Personality , primarily concerning his son. According to Psychology today, as of 2021, some of Dr Viola Bernard's papers have become viewable at Columbia University .

Director Tim Wardle chronicled the lives of the triplets in the film " Three Identical Strangers ," which debuted at Sundance 2018.

The entrance to the Auschwitz concentration camp

Perhaps the most infamous evil experiments of all time were those carried out by Josef Mengele, an SS physician at Auschwitz during the Holocaust . Mengele combed the incoming trains for twins upon which to experiment, hoping to prove his theories of the racial supremacy of Aryans. Many died in the process. He also collected the eyes of his dead "patients," according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum .

The Nazis used prisoners to test treatments for infectious diseases and chemical warfare. Others were forced into freezing temperatures and low-pressure chambers for aviation experiments, according to the Jewish Virtual Library . Countless prisoners were subjected to experimental sterilization procedures. One woman, Ruth Elias, had her breasts tied off with string so SS doctors could see how long it took her baby to starve, according to an oral history collected by the Holocaust Museum . She eventually injected the child with a lethal dose of morphine to keep it from suffering longer.

Some of the doctors responsible for these atrocities were later tried as war criminals, but Mengele escaped to South America. He died in Brazil in 1979, of a heart attack, his final years spent lonely and depressed according to The Guardian .

Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, the Japanese Imperial Army conducted biological warfare and medical testing on civilians, mostly in China . Led by General Shiro Ishii, the lead physician at UNIT 731, the death toll of these brutal experiments is unknown, but as many as 200,000 may have died, estimates Historian Sheldon H Harris according to a 1995 New York Times report .

Numerous diseases were studied in order to determine their potential use in warfare. Among them were plague, anthrax , dysentery, typhoid, paratyphoid and cholera, according to a paper by Dr Robert K D Peterson for Montana University . Numerous atrocities were committed including infecting wells with cholera and typhoid and spreading plague-ridden fleas across Chinese cities.

According to Peterson the fleas were dropped in clay bombs, which were dropped at a height of 200-300 meters and showed no trace. Prisoners were marched in freezing weather and then experimented on to determine the best treatment for frostbite.

Former members of the unit have told media outlets that prisoners were dosed with poison gas, put in pressure chambers until their eyes popped out, and even dissected while alive and conscious. After the war, the U.S. government helped keep the experiments secret as part of a plan to make Japan a cold-war ally, according to the Times report.

It was not until the late 1990's that Japan first acknowledged the existence of the unit and not until 2018 that the names of thousands of members of the Unit were disclosed, according to The Guardian .

In 1939, speech pathologists at the University of Iowa set out to prove their theory that stuttering was a learned behavior caused by a child's anxiety about speaking. Unfortunately, the way they chose to go about this was to try to induce stuttering in orphans by telling them they were doomed to start stuttering in the future.

The researchers sat down with children at the Ohio Soldiers and Sailors Orphans' Home and told them they were showing signs of stuttering and shouldn't speak unless they could be sure that they would speak right. The experiment didn't induce stuttering, but it did make formerly normal children anxious, withdrawn and silent.

Future Iowa pathology students dubbed the study, "the Monster Study," according to a 2003 New York Times article on the research. Three surviving children and the estates of three others eventually sued Iowa and the university. In 2007, Iowa settled for a total of $925,000.

The anatomist Dr Robert Knox, who Burke and Hare supplied the bodies of their victims to

Until the 1830s, the only legally available bodies for dissection by anatomists were those of executed murderers. Executed murderers being a relative rarity, many anatomists took to buying bodies from grave robbers — or doing the robbing themselves. “Body snatching as a ‘professional’ occupation didn’t really start to take shape until the end of the 18th century” Suzie Lennox, the author of Bodysnatchers: Digging Up the Untold Stories of Britain's Resurrection Men told All About History in an interview “up till then the students and anatomists would have carried out their own raids in graveyards, acquiring cadavers as and when they could”.

Edinburgh boarding house owner William Hare and his friend William Burke found a way to deliver fresh corpses to Edinbrugh's anatomy tables without ever actually stealing a body. From 1827 to 1828, the two men smothered more than a dozen lodgers at the boarding house and sold their bodies to anatomist Robert Knox, according to Mary Roach's " Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers " (W.W. Norton & Company, 2003). Knox apparently didn't notice (or didn't care) that the bodies his newest suppliers were bringing him were suspiciously fresh, Roach wrote.

Burke was later hanged for his crimes, and the case spurred the British government to loosen the restrictions on dissection. "The scandal led to the Anatomy Act of 1832 which made greater numbers of cadavers legally available to schools" Maclolm McCallum, the curator of the Edinburgh Anatomical Museum told All About History in an interview. "If you died in an asylum or hospital, and had no relatives or means to cover your funeral costs, your body would go to the schools for dissection. Crucially, the institutions which were providing the cadavers only supplied them to anatomy schools that were associated with teaching hospitals".

James Marion Sims, the 'father of gynecology', whose experiments on slaves continue to cause controversy

The father of modern gynecology, J. Marion Sims, gained much of his fame by doing experimental surgeries (sometimes several per person) on slave women, according to The Atlantic . Sims remains a controversial figure to this day, because the condition he was treating in the women, vesico-vaginal fistula, caused terrible suffering. Women with fistulas, a tear between the vagina and bladder, were incontinent and were often rejected by society.

Sims performed the surgeries without anesthesia , in part because anesthesia had only recently been discovered, and in part because Sims believed the operations were "not painful enough to justify the trouble," as he said in alecture according to NPR .

Arguments still rage as to whether Sims' patients would have consented to the surgeries had they been entirely free to choose. Nonetheless, wrote University of Alabama social work professor Durrenda Ojanuga in the Journal of Medical Ethics in 1993 , Sims "manipulated the social institution of slavery to perform human experimentations, which by any standard is unacceptable." In 2018, a statue of Sims was removed in response to the ongoing controversy, according to The Guardian .

Many people erroneously believe that the government deliberately infected the Tuskegee participants with syphilis, which was not the case. But the work of professor Susan Reverby recently exposed a time when the U.S. Public Health Service researchers did just that, according to Wellesley College . Between 1946 and 1948, Reverby found, the U.S. and Guatemalan governments co-sponsored a study involving the deliberate infection of 1,500 Guatemalan men, women and children with syphilis according to The Guardian .

The study was intended to test chemicals to prevent the spread of the disease. According to Michael A. Rodriguez in a 2013 paper; "The experiments were not conducted in a sterile clinical setting in which bacteria that cause STDs were administered in the form of a pin prick vaccination or a pill taken orally. The researchers systematically and repeatedly violated profoundly vulnerable individuals, some in the saddest and most despairing states, and grievously aggravated their suffering" Those who got syphilis were given penicillin as a treatment, Reverby found, but the records she uncovered indicate no follow-up or informed consent by the participants. On Oct. 1, 2010, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius issued a joint statement apologizing for the experiments , according to The Guardian .

The most famous lapse in medical ethics in the United States lasted for 40 years. In 1932, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Public Health Service launched a study on the health effects of untreated syphilis in black men.

The researchers tracked the progression of the disease in 399 black men in Alabama and also studied 201 healthy men , telling them they were being treated for "bad blood." In fact, the men never got adequate treatment, even in 1947 when penicillin became the drug of choice to treat syphilis. It wasn't until a 1972 newspaper article exposed the study to the public eye that officials shut it down, according to the official Tuskegee site.

The Stanford Prison Experiment

Phillip Zimbardo whose controversial Stanford Prison experiment continues to generate interest

In 1971, Philip Zimbardo , now professor emeritus of psychology at Stanford University , set out to test the "nature of human nature," to answer questions such as "What happens when you put good people in evil situations?" How he went about answering his human nature questions was and is thought by many to have been less than ethical. He set up a prison and paid college students to play guards and prisoners, who inevitably seemed to transform into abusive guards and hysterical prisoners. The two-week experiment was shut down after just six days because things turned chaotic fast. "In only a few days, our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress," Zimbardo stated, according to Times Higher Education . The guards, pretty much from the get-go, treated the prisoners awfully, humiliating them by stripping them naked and spraying their bodies with delousing chemicals and generally harassing and intimidating them, according to the Stanford Prison Experiment site

Turns out, according to a report on Medium , a news publication, in June 2018, the guards didn't become aggressive on their own — Zimbardo encouraged the abusive behavior — and some of the prisoners faked their emotional breakdowns. For instance, Douglas Korpi, a volunteer prisoner said that he faked a meltdown to get released early so he could study for an exam.

Even so, the Stanford Prison Experiment has been the basis of psychologists' and even historians' understanding of how even healthy people can become so evil when placed in certain situations, according to the American Psychological Association .

For more concerning the atrocities committed during the Holocaust, check out the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum . The New York Times original 1995 report on the events that occured at Manchu 731 is available here . Those interested in the Stanford Prison Experiment should check out the experiments website .

The Holocaust: Facts and Remembrance
The Top 10 Mad Scientists
Amy Kaufman: " The surreal, sad story behind the acclaimed new doc ‘Three Identical Strangers " Los Angeles Times, July 1 2018
Nancy L Segal: " Shame and Silence: The LWS Twin Studies Revisited " Quillette, 26th Sep 2021
Holocaust Encyclopedia: Josef Mengele
Dachau: High Altitude Experiments, Jewish Virtual Library
Jan Rocha, " Mengele Letters Reveal Life Ended in Pain and Poverty ", The Guardian, 23 Nov 2004
Nicholas D Kristoff: " Unmasking Horror - A Special Report " The New York Times, March 17th 1995
Dr Robert K D Peterson: "Japan’s Role in Developing Biological Weapons in World War II and its Effect on Contemporary Relations between Asian Countries " Montana State University
Justin McCurry: " Unit 731: Japan discloses details of notorious chemical warfare division " The Guardian, 17th April 2018
Gretchen Reynolds: " The Stuttering Doctor's 'Monster Study ", New York Times, March 16th 2003
Mary Roach's " Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers " (W.W. Norton & Company, 2003)
Sarah Zhang: " The Surgeon Who Experimented on Slaves ", The Atlantic, April 18th 2018
Camila Domonoske: " Father Of Gynecology,' Who Experimented On Slaves, No Longer On Pedestal In NYC " NPR, April 17th 2018
Durrenda Ojanuga: " The Medical Ethics of the 'Father of Gynaecology', Dr J Marion Sims ' Journal of Medical Ethics, 1993
Nadja Sayej: " J Marion Sims: controversial statue taken down but debate still rages ", The Guardian, Sat 21st April 2018
Rory Caroll, " Guatemala victims of US syphilis study still haunted by the 'devil's experiment ", The Guardian, 8th June 2011
Michael A Rodriguez, National Library of Medicine
Chris McGreal: " US says sorry for 'outrageous and abhorrent' Guatemalan syphilis tests ", The Guardian, 1st October 2010
Matthew Reisz, " Re-engaging with the Stanford Prison Experiment ". Times Higher Education, Sep 26th 2018

Sign up for the Live Science daily newsletter now

Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox.

Stephanie Pappas is a contributing writer for Live Science, covering topics ranging from geoscience to archaeology to the human brain and behavior. She was previously a senior writer for Live Science but is now a freelancer based in Denver, Colorado, and regularly contributes to Scientific American and The Monitor, the monthly magazine of the American Psychological Association. Stephanie received a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of South Carolina and a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Live Science x HowTheLightGetsIn — Get discounted tickets to the world’s largest ideas and music festival

Do opposites really attract in relationships?

1,700-year-old 'barbarian' burial discovered along Roman Empire's frontier in Germany

Topic: Human Experimentation

Addressing social justice through the lens of henrietta lacks.

Among the many disruptions of the pandemic, one particular disappointment was the cancellation of the in-person annual meeting of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH), scheduled for Baltimore and set to coincide with the Berman Institute’s 25th Anniversary Celebration and the centennial of Henrietta Lacks’s birth. Yet despite the switch to a virtual format, the Berman Institute was able to host a plenary session that was the talk of the meeting and continues to reverberate.

“Social Justice and Bioethics Through the Lens of the Story of Henrietta Lacks,” was moderated by Jeffrey Kahn and featured Ruth Faden as a panelist. She was joined by Henrietta Lacks’s granddaughter, Jeri Lacks, architect Victor Vines, and Georgetown University Law Center bioethicist Patricia King.

Faden began the session by providing an overview of the Henrietta Lacks story, famed in the context of structural injustice.

“The structural injustice of racism defined in pretty much every way how this story unfolded,” she said. “What is wrong about what happened to the Lacks family engages every core element of human well-being. There were assaults on the social basis of respect, and of self-determination, on attachments, on personal security and on health. Mrs. Lacks and her children were poor Black people in a segregated world in which the most profound injustices of racial oppression were daily features of their lives.”

Faden was followed by Jeri Lacks who expressed the importance of continuing to let the world know about her grandmother’s story.

“Her cells were used to develop the polio vaccine and to treat HIV, and in creating in vitro fertilization. She is a person who continues to give life, and to preserve life,” said Lacks. “No matter what your race, your age, your social circumstances, she continues to improve your life.”

Victor Vines, an architect who was part of the architect team leading programming and planning for the National Museum of African American History and Culture and led the feasibility study for what will be Johns Hopkins University’s Henrietta Lacks Hall, spoke next about addressing racial injustice through architecture and design.

“When we started work on Lacks Hall, we didn’t talk a lot about architecture or design. We talked about what that story is that we want to tell through the building. Meeting with the Lacks family was critically important to that,” Vines said. “We had to understand what they went through and what they care about. The building still has to function and house the Berman Institute, so we had to meet their needs. And we discovered a third client, the East Baltimore community. At the end of the day, this building and university reside within that community, and they will be called to embrace this project – or not.”

King concluded the panel with a riveting and wide-ranging discussion that touched upon intersectionality, segregation, the Tuskegee experiments and participation in clinical trials, COVID, race as a social construct, and the role of consent, all within the framework of Henrietta Lacks’s story.

“Our narratives are important and should be thought of as lessons or homework for institutions,” she said. “They not only document the deep distrust we bring to health encounters but also convey relevant aspects of our lives that should be appreciated.”

As the session ended Kahn noted that perhaps it was fortunate the session had been virtual, so the recording “could be shared with others for posterity. I’m not quite speechless, but maybe close,” he said.

Honoring an Immortal Contribution

Johns Hopkins University President Ronald J. Daniels and Paul B. Rothman, CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine and dean of the medical faculty of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, along with Berman institute Executive Director Jeffrey Kahn and descendants of Henrietta Lacks, recently announced plans to name a new multidisciplinary building on the Johns Hopkins East Baltimore campus in honor of Henrietta Lacks, who was the source of the HeLa cell line that has been critical to numerous advances in medicine.

Surrounded by descendants of Lacks, Daniels made the announcement at the 9th annual Henrietta Lacks Memorial Lecture in the Turner Auditorium in East Baltimore.

“Through her life and her immortal cells, Henrietta Lacks made an immeasurable impact on science and medicine that has touched countless lives around the world,” Daniels said. “This building will stand as a testament to her transformative impact on scientific discovery and the ethics that must undergird its pursuit. We at Johns Hopkins are profoundly grateful to the Lacks family for their partnership as we continue to learn from Mrs. Lacks’ life and to honor her enduring legacy.”

Henrietta Lacks’ contributions to science were not widely known until the 2010 release of the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, which explored Lacks’ life story, her impact on medical science and important bioethical issues. In 2017, HBO and Harpo Studios released a movie based on the book, with Oprah Winfrey starring as Deborah Lacks, Henrietta Lacks’ daughter.

Several Lacks family members attended today’s event. “It is a proud day for the Lacks family. We have been working with Hopkins for many years now on events and projects that honor our grandmother,” said Jeri Lacks, granddaughter of Henrietta Lacks. “They are all meaningful, but this is the ultimate honor, one befitting of her role in advancing modern medicine.”

The building, which will adjoin the Berman Institute of Bioethics’ current home in Deering Hall will support programs that enhance participation and partnership with members of the community in research that can benefit the community, as well as extend the opportunities to further study and promote research ethics and community engagement in research through an expansion of the Berman Institute and its work.

The story portrayed in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks points to several important bioethical issues, including informed consent, medical records privacy, and communication with tissue donors and research participants.

“The story of Henrietta Lacks has encouraged us all to examine, discuss and wrestle with difficult issues that are at the foundation of the ethics of research, and must inform our relationships with the individuals and communities that are part of that research,” said Jeffrey Kahn, director of the Johns Hopkins University Berman Institute of Bioethics. “As a result, students, faculty and the entire research community at Johns Hopkins and around the world do their work with a greater sensitivity to these critical issues.”

In 2013, Johns Hopkins worked with members of the Lacks family and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to help broker an agreement that requires scientists to receive permission to use Henrietta Lacks’ genetic blueprint in NIH-funded research.

The NIH committee tasked with overseeing the use of HeLa cells now includes two members of the Lacks family. The medical research community has also made significant strides in improving research practices, in part thanks to the lessons learned from Henrietta Lacks’ story.

“It has been an honor for me to work with the Lacks family on how we can recognize the contribution of Henrietta Lacks to medical research and the community. Their willingness to focus on the positive impact of the HeLa cells has been inspiring to me. The Henrietta Lacks story has led many researchers to rededicate themselves to working more closely with patients,” said Daniel E. Ford, vice dean for clinical investigation in the school of medicine. “The new building will be a hub for the community engagement and collaboration program of the NIH-supported Institute for Clinical and Translational Research.”

Groundbreaking on the building that will be named for Henrietta Lacks is scheduled for 2020 with an anticipated completion in 2022.

To learn more about Henrietta Lacks and the wide-ranging impact of HeLa cells on medical research,

please visit: www.hopkinsmedicine.org/henriettalacks .

Alan Regenberg, MBE

Alan is also engaged in a broad range of research projects and programs, including the Berman Institute’s science programs: the Stem Cell Policy and Ethics (SCOPE) Program ; the Program in Ethics and Brain Sciences (PEBS-Neuroethics) ; and the Hinxton Group , an international consortium on stem cells, ethics and law; and the eSchool+ Initiative . Recent research has focused on using deliberative democracy tools to engage with communities about their values for allocating scarce medical resources like ventilators in disasters like pandemics. Additional recent work has focused on ethical challenges related to gene editing, stem cell research, social media, public engagement, vaccines, and neuroethics. ( Publications )

Joseph Ali, JD

Vaccinating pregnant women against ebola.

In a STAT News opinion piece, Johns Hopkins University experts, including our Ruth Faden, argued it is unfair to deny pregnant and lactating women the experimental Ebola vaccine if they wish to take it, given the great risk the virus poses to those who are exposed to it.

“From a public health perspective and an ethical perspective, the decision to exclude pregnant and lactating women is utterly indefensible,” they wrote.

The authors are members of Pregnancy Research Ethics for Vaccines, Epidemics, and New Technologies (PREVENT) Working Group, which has brought together an international team of experts in bioethics, maternal immunization, maternal-fetal medicine, obstetrics, pediatrics, philosophy, public health, and vaccine research to provide specific recommendations developed to address this critical gap in vaccine research and development and epidemic response. This group recognizes that excluding pregnant women from efforts to develop and deploy vaccines against emerging threats is not acceptable.

Nancy E. Kass, ScD

Dr. Kass is coeditor (with Ruth Faden) of HIV, AIDS and Childbearing: Public Policy, Private Lives (Oxford University Press, 1996).

She has served as consultant to the President’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, to the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, and to the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Kass currently serves as the Chair of the NIH Precision Medicine Initiative Central IRB; she previously co-chaired the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Committee to develop Recommendations for Informed Consent Documents for Cancer Clinical Trials and served on the NCI’s central IRB. Current research projects examine improving informed consent in human research, ethical guidance development for Ebola and other infectious outbreaks, and ethics and learning health care. Dr. Kass teaches the Bloomberg School of Public Health’s course on U.S. and International Research Ethics and Integrity, she served as the director of the School’s PhD program in bioethics and health policy from its inception until 2016, and she has directed (with Adnan Hyder) the Johns Hopkins Fogarty African Bioethics Training Program since its inception in 2000. Dr. Kass is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine (now National Academy of Medicine) and an elected Fellow of the Hastings Center.

Jeremy Sugarman, MD, MPH, MA

He was the founding director of the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities and History of Medicine at Duke University where he was also a professor of medicine and philosophy. He was appointed as an Academic Icon at the University of Malaya and is a faculty affiliate of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University.

Dr. Sugarman was the longstanding chair of the Ethics Working Group of the HIV Prevention Trials Network. He is currently a member of the Scientific and Research Advisory Board for the Canadian Blood Service and the Ethics and Public Policy Committees of the International Society for Stem Cell Research. He co-leads the Ethics and Regulatory Core of the NIH Health Care Systems Research Collaboratory and is co-chair of the Johns Hopkins’ Institutional Stem Cell Research Oversight Committee.

Dr. Sugarman has been elected as a member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation, Association of American Physicians, and the National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine). He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American College of Physicians and the Hastings Center. He also received a Doctor of Science, honoris causa, from New York Medical College.

Why Science Needs Human Experience

Human experience plays a critical role in scientific inquiry..

Posted September 2, 2024 | Reviewed by Lybi Ma

Science gains validity by connecting back to human experience.
Human inference is shaped by our experiences and frames of reference.
Ignoring human experience risks creating abstract, impractical science.
Experience enriches science but doesn't supplant empirical methods.

In the quest for knowledge, science often prides itself on objectivity and empirical evidence. It is often contrasted with lived experience, which is defined as innately subjective and clearly in opposition to the objectivity of science. But, as I argued previously [1] , such a positioning represents a false dichotomy.

Some researchers (A. Frank, M. Gleiser, E. Thompson, 2024) appear to make a similar argument that science versus lived experience is a false dichotomy, with claims going further: without human experience, science itself ceases to exist.

The Disconnect from Experience

The argument emphasizes that science developed to systematically examine phenomena experienced in the physical world. Early astronomers made inferences about celestial bodies based on their direct experiences of the night sky. And that’s where science comes from, human experience. It’s that experience that results in research questions that then become the subject of scientific work.

But it isn’t just that personal experience drives science. The authors argue that for science to be “valid and meaningful,” it must connect back to human experience. Otherwise, it becomes easy to theorize in ways that become further removed from a testable reality. And here lies a key point: a testable reality differentiates science from faith, fantasy , and delusion.

But for science to work, we have to be able to rely on human experience as a springboard to empirical examination. The results of that empirical examination are the basis of inferences we make about our testable reality. While we often think of science as a purely objective endeavor, much of what we study, how we study it, and the inferences we draw from that study are grounded in our frame of reference . Our experiences, beliefs, and prior knowledge influence the entire scientific process.

The Subtle Influence of Experience

Our lived experiences subtly influence the scientific process. Our experiences, values, beliefs, and other more subjective factors affect issues such as what we study, how we study it, how we examine our data, and the inferences we draw from that examination. While there are certainly some agreed-upon rules and norms in various scientific disciplines (for example, what statistics to use or not use for certain types of data), a lot of the key details of a study are influenced by subjective factors. This subjective influence is not a flaw, per se; instead, it reflects the complex interplay between rational thought and personal experience, but no matter how much standardization or objectivity we try to impose, there are aspects of science that do not necessarily adhere to strict logical frameworks [3] .

Scientists, in their pursuit of objectivity, often overlook this interplay and fail to recognize the role it plays. Yet, it is precisely this blend of empirical data and personal experience that enriches our understanding and makes scientific inquiry relevant to our lives. When we ignore the human element, we risk creating knowledge that may be technically or mathematically workable but practically meaningless.

Consider a practical example of how experience shapes scientific understanding. In the field of medicine, patient experiences often guide hypotheses and research directions. The discovery of certain side effects of medications, for example, frequently comes from patients' subjective reports, which then lead to more rigorous scientific investigations.

The Practical Implications of Ignoring Experience

Ignoring the role of human experience in science can have significant implications. In areas like mental health, disregarding subjective experiences can lead to treatments that are less effective or even harmful. Personal narratives and patient histories are vital for understanding and treating psychological conditions. This approach underscores the necessity of valuing human experience within scientific paradigms.

Additionally, in technology and innovation , user experience plays a role in the development and refinement of products. Companies that ignore user feedback often fail to create successful products. The feedback loop between users' experiences and technological advancements demonstrates the symbiotic relationship between empirical data and subjective input.

However, it’s important to note that while experience enriches science, it doesn't supplant it. Personal anecdotes and subjective interpretations must be tested and validated through rigorous scientific methods if they are to be effectively integrated into the scientific process. This ensures that findings are not just based on isolated experiences but are generalizable, at least to some degree. Science gains its strength from this balance: grounded in human experience while being tested against more objective standards.

But scientists themselves also need to recognize that their experiences affect the scientific process. This is especially the case in the social sciences, where scientists’ beliefs, values, and experiences can influence the entire research process and potentially introduce biases into that research [4] . No amount of quantification is going to remove all the subjectivity of research [5] . And that’s generally okay (except when biases produce low-quality research) because at least some of that subjectivity is what allows scientists to see the potential for various types of research.

The argument by Frank and colleagues, that science must connect back to human experience, is not just valid but necessary. Science devoid of human experience risks becoming an abstract exercise, disconnected from the very reality it seeks to understand [6] . By acknowledging the fundamental link between science and human experience, we can better ensure that scientific inquiry remains relevant and meaningful. But it also requires us to recognize when our own subjective experience might be introducing biases that weaken the scientific enterprise.

In the end, the interplay between science and experience should enrich both the scientific enterprise and human experience. Embracing this relationship allows us to harness the full potential of scientific inquiry while remaining grounded in the realities of human experience. This duality is essential for advancing knowledge and addressing the complexities of the world we live in.

[1] Science-vs-lived-experience-false-dichotomy

[2] The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience . MIT Press. Frank, Gleiser, and Thompson (2024)

[3] This was an issue I explored here: Our-decision-making-doesnt-always-fit-the-rules-logic

[4] One of the most frequent comments I make in reviewing journals is that the authors have overhyped their results, showing a bias toward “proving” the importance of their research.

[5] It would be hubris to claim otherwise.

[6] Both string theory and the multiverse theory would fall into this category.

Matt Grawitch, Ph.D. , is a professor at Saint Louis University (SLU), serving within the School for Professional Studies (SPS).

Find a Therapist
Find a Treatment Center
Find a Psychiatrist
Find a Support Group
Find Online Therapy
United States
Brooklyn, NY
Chicago, IL
Houston, TX
Los Angeles, CA
New York, NY
Portland, OR
San Diego, CA
San Francisco, CA
Seattle, WA
Washington, DC
Asperger's
Bipolar Disorder
Chronic Pain
Eating Disorders
Passive Aggression
Personality
Goal Setting
Positive Psychology
Stopping Smoking
Low Sexual Desire
Relationships
Child Development
Self Tests NEW
Therapy Center
Diagnosis Dictionary
Types of Therapy

It’s increasingly common for someone to be diagnosed with a condition such as ADHD or autism as an adult. A diagnosis often brings relief, but it can also come with as many questions as answers.

Emotional Intelligence
Gaslighting
Affective Forecasting
Neuroscience

Along with Stanford news and stories, show me:

Student information
Faculty/Staff information

We want to provide announcements, events, leadership messages and resources that are relevant to you. Your selection is stored in a browser cookie which you can remove at any time using “Clear all personalization” below.

Seeing what’s going on inside a body is never easy. While technologies like CT scans, X-rays, MRIs, and microscopy can provide insights, the images are rarely completely clear and can come with side effects like radiation exposure.

But what if you could apply a substance on the skin, much like a moisturizing cream, and make it transparent, without harming the tissue?

That’s what Stanford scientists have done using an FDA-approved dye that is commonly found in food, among several other light-absorbing molecules that exhibit similar effects. Published in Science on Sept. 5, the research details how rubbing a dye solution on the skin of a mouse in a lab allowed researchers to see, with the naked eye, through the skin to the internal organs, without making an incision. And, just as easily as the transparency happened, it could be reversed.

“As soon as we rinsed and massaged the skin with water, the effect was reversed within minutes,” said Guosong Hong , assistant professor of materials science and engineering and senior author on the paper. “It’s a stunning result.”

Absorption reduces scattering of light

When light waves strike the skin, the tissue scatters them, making it appear opaque and non-transparent to the eye. This scattering effect arises from the difference in the refractive indices of different tissue components, such as water and lipids. Water usually has a much lower refractive index than lipids in the visible spectrum, causing visible light to scatter as it goes through tissue containing both.

To match the refractive indices of different tissue components, the team massaged a solution of red tartrazine – also known as the food dye FD&C Yellow 5 – onto the abdomen, scalp, and hindlimb of a sedated mouse. The skin turned red in color, indicating that much of the blue light had been absorbed due to the presence of this light-absorbing molecule. This increase in absorption altered the refractive index of the water at a different wavelength – in this case, red. As a result of the absorption of the dye, the refractive index of water matches that of lipids in the red spectrum, leading to reduced scattering and making the skin appear more transparent at the red wavelength.

This research is a new application of decades-old equations that can describe the relationship between absorption and refractive index, called the Kramers-Kronig relations. In addition to this food dye, several other light-absorbing molecules have demonstrated similar effects, thereby confirming the generalizability of the underlying physics behind this phenomenon.

Researchers were able to see, without special equipment, the functioning internal organs, including the liver, small intestine, cecum, and bladder. They were also able to visualize blood flow in the brain and the fine structures of muscle fibers in the limb. The mouse’s beating heart and active respiratory system indicated that transparency was successfully achieved in live animals. Furthermore, the dye didn’t permanently alter the subject’s skin, and the transparency disappeared as soon as the dye was rinsed with water.

The researchers believe this is the first non-invasive approach to achieving visibility of a mouse’s living internal organs.

“Stanford is the perfect place for such a multifaceted project that brings together experts in materials science, neuroscience, biology, applied physics, and optics,” said Mark Brongersma , professor of materials science and engineering and co-author on the paper. “Each discipline comes with its own language. Guosong and I enjoyed taking each other’s courses on neuroscience and nanophotonics to better appreciate all the exciting opportunities.”

The potential future of ‘clear’ tissue

Right now, the study has only been conducted on an animal. If the same technique could be translated to humans, it could provide a range of biological, diagnostic, and even cosmetic benefits, Hong said.

For example, instead of through invasive biopsies, melanoma testing could be done by looking directly at a person’s tissue without removing it. This approach could potentially also replace some X-rays and CT scans, and make blood draws less painful by helping phlebotomists easily find veins. It could also improve services like laser tattoo removal by helping to focus laser beams precisely where the pigment is below the skin.

“This could have an impact on health care and prevent people from undergoing invasive kinds of testing,” said Hong. “If we could just look at what’s going on under the skin instead of cutting into it, or using radiation to get a less than clear look, we could change the way we see the human body.”

For more information

Other Stanford co-authors include Betty Cai, member of the Department of Materials Science Engineering ; Zihao Ou, Carl H. C. Keck, Shan Jiang, Kenneth Brinson Jr, Su Zhao, Elizabeth L. Schmidt, Xiang Wu, Fan Yang, Han Cui, and Shifu Wu, who are also with the Department of Materials Science Engineering and Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute ; Yi-Shiou Duh of the Department of Physics and Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials ; Nicholas J. Rommelfanger of the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute and Department of Applied Physics ; Wei Qi and Xiaoke Chen of the Department of Biology ; Adarsh Tantry of the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute and Neurosciences IDP Graduate program ; Richard Roth of the Department of Neurosurgery ; Jun Ding of the Department of Neurosurgery and Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences ; and Julia A. Kaltschmidt of the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute and Department of Neurosurgery .

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Air Force, Beckman Technology, Rita Allen Foundation, Focused Ultrasound Foundation, Spinal Muscular Atrophy Foundation, Pinetops Foundation, Bio-X Initiative of Stanford University, Wu Tsai Neuroscience Institute, Knight-Hennessy, and U.S. Army Long Term Health Education and Training program.

Disclaimer: The technique described above has not been tested on humans. Dyes may be harmful. Always exercise caution when handling dyes – do not consume them, apply them to people or animals, or misuse them in any way.

Media contacts:

Jill Wu, School of Engineering: [email protected]

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Publications
Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

Advanced Search
Journal List
HHS Author Manuscripts

Treat Human Subjects with More Humanity

Buy-in to medical research requires that participating communities benefit from the data collected, and can trust how their data will be used.

In 2020, when trials for the COVID-19 vaccines were in full swing, and Indigenous nations within the United States were being hit hard by the virus, about 460 Indigenous people from several of these nations participated in the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine trials. The review boards of the different nations had to approve involvement in the trials first. Not all members of these nations were happy about the decision, given a long history in which Indigenous people did not give consent to medical testing, or were not fully informed about procedures or how samples would be used.

Such instances highlight the need for transparency and clarity in any research involving human subjects. Indigenous people who participated in these trials had to balance their misgivings with their desire to help their nations fight the virus. The need is evident: A 2021 JAMA Network Open paper by Laura Flores of the University of Nebraska Medical Center and her colleagues found that across 230 U.S.-based vaccine clinical trials, white participants still accounted for nearly 80 percent of those enrolled. But when medical studies do focus on Indigenous people, they have made an impact: Common vaccines, such as ones for bacterial meningitis and human papillomavirus, have been shown not to be as effective for Indigenous populations, leading to dosing changes and other adjustments. The health disparities that need addressing are obvious, but the population’s trust—which could lead to data that help resolve disparities—has been eroded.

These examples and many other famous cases, such as the scandal of the Tuskegee study ( see Edwards, pages 238–242 ), provide vivid reminders of the importance of earning and maintaining trust in research involving human participants. Trust defines and nurtures relationships among subjects, investigators, research institutions, communities, ethics oversight committees, government oversight agencies, the scientific enterprise, and the public at large. All these different individuals and organizations must work together to ensure that research with human participants meets scientific and ethical standards. When trust breaks down, significant harms can occur to research participants, researchers, institutions, communities, and society. Most of the laws, regulations, and ethical guidelines that govern research with human subjects have been developed to restore or promote trust. Trust is vital to every stage of research, from recruitment and informed consent to confidentiality and protocol compliance.

The Scope of Trust

Trust is a complex idea. When we think about trust involving research with human participants, our attention naturally turns to the trust between research subjects and investigators. Research participants expect that investigators will do their best to protect them from harm, to disclose information relevant to them in deciding whether to enroll in a study, to protect their privacy and confidentiality, and to ensure the study is designed and implemented in such a way that it is likely to generate useful knowledge. Investigators also trust that participants will answer questions honestly, disclose information relevant to the research, and do their best to follow study requirements. Trust between participants and investigators is a two-way street.

Informed consent is essential to establishing and maintaining trust between participants and investigators. Consent is much more than the signing of a piece of paper: It is an ongoing discussion that involves not only disclosure of information and the answering of questions, but also the sharing of concerns and perspectives. Because consent documents have become so lengthy and full of scientific and legal jargon, participants must depend on investigators to help them understand the information and to make choices that reflect their values.

Trust also extends to many relationships. Institutional review boards (IRBs), for example, expect that investigators and their staff will comply with the approved research protocol and report unanticipated problems, noncompliance, and serious adverse events. Communities must trust that research institutions will shield community members from harm or exploitation and promote community interests. Sponsors, both public and private, must trust that institutions will comply with legal and ethical requirements as well as those stated in research grants or contracts. The public expects the research enterprise to adhere to scientific and ethical standards and deliver knowledge that is useful not only for its own sake but also for society.

Research Before Regulation

Prior to World War II, there were no international ethics codes concerning research with human subjects, and only one country, Prussia (now part of Germany), had any human experimentation laws. The first known use of an informed consent form in medical research was by U.S. Army physician Walter Reed (1851–1902). From 1900 to 1901, Reed conducted experiments in Cuba that helped to show that mosquitos transmit yellow fever. Reed enrolled 33 healthy volunteers in his experiments; most of them contracted yellow fever, and six died. Indeed, the volunteers recognized that these experiments were very dangerous, but they agreed to participate because they wanted to help eradicate the disease, they wanted to earn $100 in gold (the payment for participation), or both. Reed asked the volunteers to sign informed consent documents that included information about the nature of the research and the benefits and risks of the experiments.

During World War II, scientists in Germany and Japan conducted horrific experiments on thousands of prisoners against their will. The victorious Allied powers prosecuted German doctors and scientists for war crimes related to human experimentation during the Nuremberg trials. The Nuremberg judges promulgated the Nuremberg Code, the world’s first international ethical guidance for human experimentation, to serve as a source of international law for prosecuting German scientists and doctors. Unfortunately, Japanese researchers were not charged with war crimes because the United States agreed not to prosecute them in exchange for access to their data. Nonetheless, the Nuremberg Code would largely become a template for modern medical ethics guidelines.

The Advent of Regulations

By the early 1970s, many physicians and researchers, and some concerned citizens were becoming increasingly aware of ethical problems in research with human subjects, but there were still no regulations governing this activity. The motivation for developing regulations came from the reaction of the public to the abuses of human beings that occurred in the Tuskegee study. In 1974, President Nixon signed the National Research Act to create the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research; in 1979, this commission released an influential document, known as the Belmont Report , which provided a conceptual foundation for a major revision of federal research regulations. In 1981, 15 federal agencies adopted a set of regulations known as the Common Rule, which applies to research funded by those agencies. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) then adopted regulations that apply to human research studies involving FDA-regulated products, such as drugs or medical devices, whether publicly or privately funded.

IRBs are the locus of research review and oversight. Institutions that conduct research with human subjects governed by the Common Rule or the FDA regulations must have an IRB or rely on another institution for IRB review and oversight. IRBs are composed of at least five members of varying backgrounds, including at least one member who is not a scientist and one member who is not associated with the institution. An IRB may not approve a human research study unless it determines that risks are minimized and are reasonable in relation to benefits to the subjects or society; consent will be sought from the subject or the subject’s legal representative and appropriately documented; confidentiality and privacy will be adequately protected; selection of subjects will be equitable; and there will be additional protections in place (if needed) for subjects who may be vulnerable to exploitation, such as children, mentally disabled adults, or socioeconomically or educationally disadvantaged adults. The regulations also state various requirements that apply to the informed consent process and its documentation.

Since the 1980s, dozens of other countries, and some U.S. states, have adopted their own human research laws and regulations, most of which are substantially similar to the Common Rule. Courts have made numerous rulings that have established and clarified legal liability for research with human subjects. Scientific and professional organizations, such as the World Health Organization, the Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences, the American Medical Association, and the American Psychological Association, have adopted ethical guidelines for human research. The Association for Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs has also developed ethical standards, which are followed by hundreds of IRBs and research institutions. But regulations must continue to evolve with changing technologies; for instance, there is much debate about whether it is appropriate for IRBs to govern big-data biomedical studies that use large-scale databases of anonymized, aggregated data.

Scandals and Controversies

Although research with human subjects is now one of the most heavily regulated areas of science, it was a laissez-faire endeavor prior to the advent of U.S. federal regulations, and scandals and ethical controversies have continued to come to light. Many of these episodes echo the type of breakdown of trust that occurred in the Tuskegee study.

In 1994, President Bill Clinton declassified secret human radiation experiments conducted by scientists working for the U.S. Department of Energy and Department of Defense from the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s. These experiments, which were carried out for the purpose of generating knowledge to help the nation survive a nuclear attack, exposed thousands of civilians and soldiers to ionizing radiation without their consent. In one of the most egregious studies, researchers at a free prenatal clinic run by Vanderbilt University administered radioactive iron to 751 poor, white pregnant women to learn how radiation affects fetal development. In 1998, the women won a $10.3 million lawsuit against the university.

In 2010, Susan Reverby, a history professor at Wellesley College, was reviewing government documents related to the Tuskegee study and discovered an experiment funded by the U.S. Public Health Service to prevent syphilis, which took place in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948. In the experiment, investigators administered penicillin prophylactically to 696 prisoners, then exposed them to syphilis to test the efficacy of this intervention. After Reverby published her findings, President Barack Obama issued an apology to the Guatemalan government and asked a presidential bioethics commission to review U.S. laws and regulations to ensure that they provided adequate protections for human participants.

About the same time that Reverby published her findings, journalist Rebecca Skloot began investigating the origins of a widely used human cell line known as HeLa. HeLa cells were the first human cells that could be easily grown in the laboratory, indefinitely. They have been, and continue to be, used extensively in research on cancer and cell structures and functions. Skloot discovered that the cell line was named after Henrietta Lacks, an African American woman who received treatment for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1951. The doctors who cared for Lacks cultured cells from a tumor they removed from her. The investigators did not obtain consent to use the cells in research, and Lacks did not receive any compensation for the use of her tissue. Skloot wrote a book about Lacks that became a national bestseller in 2011 and was adapted into a film in 2017. In 2010, Skloot established the Henrietta Lacks Foundation and donated profits from her book and movie rights to the foundation. In 2013, the NIH reached an agreement with the Lacks family concerning researchers’ access to genomic data from the cell line and acknowledgement in scientific papers.

Who Owns Samples?

Control over biological samples has continued to be an important issue since the Belmont Report . In 1976, John Moore underwent a splenectomy as part of his treatment for leukemia at the University of California at Los Angeles Medical Center. Unbeknownst to Moore, his physician, David Golde, began growing and was in the process of patenting a cell line extracted from Moore’s spleen. The cell line had an estimated $3 billion market value because it was overproducing lymphokines —immune system proteins that have multiple uses in biomedical research and clinical medicine. Moore learned of the deception in 1983 and sued Golde and the University of California. The California Supreme Court ruled in 1990 that the University of California did not owe Moore any compensation, because Moore had relinquished any property rights when he agreed to have the tissue removed from his body and designated as medical waste. The Court did agree that Moore’s right to informed consent had been violated.

A dispute over control of biological samples took place between the Havasupai Native American tribe and Arizona State University. In 1990, researchers working for the university collected blood from 41 members of the tribe for a study on the genetics of diabetes. Although tribal leaders were under the impression that the study would focus only on diabetes, the consent forms stated that the samples and data might also be used for research on mental illness. Tribal members were outraged upon discovering that the investigators had used their samples and data to study schizophrenia and the tribe’s genetic origins, and had shared them with other researchers without permission. In 2003, the tribe barred researchers and employees from the university from the reservation and halted all research. In 2004, the tribe brought a lawsuit against the university, which was settled in 2010. Under the terms of the settlement, the university agreed to pay the participants $17,000 each and return the blood samples.

In 2002 the Navajo Nation placed a moratorium on genetic research within its territory, which it revisited in 2017 because of the potential of precision medicine. The All of Us Research Program, launched by the Obama Administration in 2015, began an intensive recruitment drive to collect minority genetic and medical data. The purpose of the drive is to bring medical insights to under-served populations, but the Navajo Nation balked at allowing researchers to access data without their oversight. In 2019, Indigenous geneticists published a critique in Nature Reviews Genetics questioning All of Us’s consent procedures, and it came to light that All of Us had recruited tribal members off of Navajo lands without completing a consultation process with tribal leaders, which the Navajo considered a breach of trust. The Navajo moratorium on genetic research has remained in place.

Science and Money

Since the 1980s, there has been increasing concern that private funding and financial interests, such as ownership of stock or intellectual property, are corrupting research by increasing the risk of bias and deliberate misbehaviors, such as data fabrication or falsification, or data suppression (such as not publishing data).

For example, in 1999 the FDA approved Merck’s drug rofecoxib (trade name Vioxx) as a treatment for chronic pain and inflammation. In 2000, investigators with financial ties to Merck published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine comparing Vioxx to several other competing medications and claimed that Vioxx, which had $2.5 billion in annual sales, was superior to these other drugs because it had few gastrointestinal side effects. However, the editors of the journal soon discovered that Merck had underreported cardiovascular risk data in the article, and they published an expression of concern. In 2002, the FDA warned the company that it had misrepresented Vioxx’s safety profile and issued a warning for the drug. Shortly thereafter, thousands of patients—or their surviving family members—brought lawsuits against the company, claiming the drug had caused heart attacks or strokes. Merck withdrew the drug from the market in 2004 because of safety and liability concerns.

In response to data suppression by drug companies, the U.S. Congress passed legislation in 2007, which came into effect only in 2017, requiring private or public sponsors of clinical trials involving FDA-regulated products to register their trials on a public website, such as ClinicalTrials.gov . Most biomedical journals also adopted clinical trial registration policies. To register a clinical trial, the responsible party, such as the sponsor or principal investigator, must submit critical information about the trial, such as its design, interventions, methods, population, aims and objectives, experimental sites, investigators, and endpoints. Registration does not completely prevent data suppression, but it does allow physicians, scientists, and patients to learn about studies and helps to promote trust in clinical research.

Lack of disclosure has been a factor in clinical trials as well. The tragic death of Jesse Gelsinger, an 18-year-old patient in a Phase I gene therapy study at the University of Pennsylvania in 1999, illustrates some of the ways that financial conflicts of interest can threaten not only the integrity of research and the public’s trust in science, but also the welfare and rights of human subjects. Gelsinger had a defect in a gene that codes for an enzyme that plays an important role in protein metabolism. The goal of the study was to use an adenovirus vector to transfer a functional copy of the gene into Gelsinger’s liver cells. Unfortunately, Gelsinger succumbed to a severe immune response to the adenovirus. Investigations by the FDA and the Office for Human Research Protections found that the principal investigator for the study, James Wilson, had not fully informed Gelsinger about adverse effects of the vector in animal studies, as well as financial interests related to the study. Wilson held 30 percent of the stock in Genovo, a company that he had founded. The university also held stock in the company. Wilson also had 20 patents on gene therapy methods, some of which had been transferred to the university. The consent document included a statement saying that Wilson and the university had financial interests related to the study, but it did not describe those interests in any detail.

The Gelsinger case damaged the public’s trust in gene therapy research and set back the field considerably. Funders, associations, institutions, and journals responded to this incident by strengthening financial disclosure and management policies.

Promoting Trust

Trustworthiness is sometimes assumed, such as when a child trusts a parent, but more often it must be earned or validated. Trust is a relationship between and among human beings built upon shared expectations, effective communications, and ethical commitments. To establish and maintain a trusting relationship, each party must regard the other as worthy of trust. When two strangers become friends, they develop trust as they get to know each other’s values, interests, and life experiences, and as they satisfy mutual expectations. If a friend keeps a secret for me, I can trust him or her with more secrets. However, if a friend divulges secrets without permission, the trust we have formed is broken.

In many social interactions, we must trust those with whom we do not have close personal relationships, such as doctors, bankers, auto mechanics, scientists, government officials, and so on. Trust between strangers depends on behavioral expectations defined by explicit or implicit norms, such as laws or ethical standards. For example, I can trust a doctor whom I don’t know personally because I believe that he or she is a member of a profession that follows ethical and professional norms, such as the Healthcare Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)—passed in 1996 with updated requirements for medical records privacy through 2013. I can trust that the doctor will use his or her judgment and skill to promote my well-being, and that he or she will keep my medical information confidential.

Rules and norms can therefore play a crucial role in promoting trust in situations where people are not likely to know each other personally, such as health care or research involving human subjects. Laws, regulations, and guidelines are essential to promoting trust in research with human subjects. Government agencies, professional organizations and associations, and scientific journals have played, and continue to play, an important role in developing research rules and norms, and revising them in response to emerging technologies, areas of research, or public concerns.

For rules and norms to be effective, they must be taught, applied, practiced, and enforced. Academic institutions can help to implement research rules and norms by sponsoring educational programs in research ethics for investigators, research staff, administrators, IRB members, and community members; making ethics consultation and guidance available for investigators and research staff; providing financial and logistical support for oversight committees; developing policies and procedures for human subjects research; managing financial interests; and auditing research. Professional organizations can help with implementation by educating their members about research ethics rules and norms, and by enforcing ethical and professional standards.

Trust involves much more than following rules or norms, however. To nurture trust, it is also important to establish the kind of mutual understanding that occurs in personal or professional relationships. Public and community engagement can be instrumental in promoting trust in research with human subjects insofar as engagement activities generate mutual understanding. Engagement is a dialogue among interested parties or stakeholders that involves the sharing not only of information, but also of ideas, interests, values, world-views, needs, and concerns. There are many different strategies researchers can use to engage the public and communities. Some of these include conducting focus groups, seminars, or forums with members of the public; surveying public opinion; meeting with community, civic, and religious organizations; and publishing information in articles, books, editorials, or websites. Engagement is like informed consent but carried out at the level of the community or larger public.

Building and maintaining trust in research with human subjects is no easy task, but it is well worth the effort. Trust is important not only for avoiding serious ethical lapses in research but also for advancing scientific knowledge. Most of the knowledge we have obtained about human health, physiology, development, genetics, psychology, and behavior would not be possible without a web of trust uniting participants, researchers, institutions, communities, and sponsors toward the common goal of conducting research that benefits humanity.

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is nihms-1736140-f0001.jpg

Research with human subjects is important not only for the advancement of scientific knowledge but also for the betterment of society. The tests, treatments, and vaccines for COVID-19, for example, could not have been developed or tested without thousands of human volunteers. For research with human subjects to move forward, key stakeholders must not only develop and adhere to ethical rules and guidelines, but they must also take the steps needed to build and maintain trust.

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is nihms-1736140-f0002.jpg

Formulated in 1947 by American judges sitting in judgment of Nazi doctors accused of conducting horrendous human experiments in concentration camps, the Nuremberg Code established basic principles for protecting human subjects. It remains the most important document in the history of medical research ethics.

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is nihms-1736140-f0003.jpg

Henrietta Lacks had cells removed during a 1951 biopsy; they were then used for experimental purposes without her consent or compensation. Her cells, known as HeLa, are still widely used in biomedical research.

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is nihms-1736140-f0004.jpg

In 1998, British physician Andrew Wakefield and his collaborators published an article in the Lancet claiming that the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine can increase the risk of autism in children. Members of the anti-vaccine movement ( above, left ) seized upon this study as proof that vaccines can cause autism. Vaccination rates in the United Kingdom and the United States declined following the publication of Wakefield’s paper, and measles cases skyrocketed. Several years after this study was published, investigative journalist Brian Deer found that Wakefield had failed to disclose funding he received from a law firm that was suing vaccine manufacturers, had not obtained ethical approval for the study, and had fabricated and falsified data. The Lancet withdrew the article and the UK’s General Medical Council revoked Wakefield’s license to practice medicine. Anti-vaccine protestors still cite the study, but receive pushback from pro-science advocates ( above, right ).

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is nihms-1736140-f0005.jpg

Studies involving human subjects rely on an interactive network between researchers, ethics boards, the public, and stakeholders, which aims at developing and executing informative investigations while ensuring the well-being of the participants. The links connecting each node are based on trust, communication, and regulatory affairs. (Adapted from D. B. Resnik, 2018 .)

When trust breaks down in research with human participants, significant harms can occur to the research participants as well as to institutions and communities.

Institutional review boards (IRBs) have been in place since legislation was passed in the mid-1970s and federal agencies adopted rules for research that they fund.

Issues of trust involve not just informed consent, but also disclosure about potential risk, additional use of biological samples, and financial conflicts of interest.

David B. Resnik is a bioethicist at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). He was chair of the NIEHS Institutional Review Board from 2008–2019 and is a Certified IRB Professional.

Bibliography

Corbie-Smith G, Thomas SB, and St. George DM. 2002. Distrust, race, and research . Archives of Internal Medicine 162 :2458–2463. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Kraft SA, et al. 2018. Beyond consent: Building trusting relationships with diverse populations in precision medicine research . American Journal of Bioethics 18 ( 4 ):3–20. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Resnik DB 2018. The Ethics of Research with Human Subjects: Protecting People, Advancing Science, Promoting Trust . Cham, Switzerland: Springer. [ Google Scholar ]
Reverby SM 2010. Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy . Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. [ Google Scholar ]

Resources »
Affiliate Scholarship »
When and Why…

When and Why Is Research without Consent Permissible?

Luke Gelinas (Fellow in Clinical Research Ethics), Alan Wertheimer, and Franklin G. Miller Hastings Center Report 46 2016 Read the Full Article

The view that research with competent adults requires valid consent to be ethical perhaps finds its clearest expression in the Nuremberg Code, whose famous first principle asserts that “the voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.” In a similar vein, the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states that “no one shall be subjected without his free consent to medical or scientific experimentation.” Yet although some formulations of the consent principle allow no exceptions, others hold that informed consent is not always strictly necessary for ethical research. The U.S. federal regulations known as the “Common Rule,” which govern research with human subjects, lists several conditions for waiving consent. However, neither guidance documents on the ethics of clinical research nor the literature in bioethics contains a general justification of research without consent. The purpose of this paper is to advance a justificatory framework that will explain why research without consent is permissible in paradigmatic cases and that can be useful in analyzing cases about which there is (or is likely to be) disagreement. We argue that research without consent can be justified on two grounds: if it stands to infringe no right of the participants and obtaining consent is impracticable, or if the gravity of the rights infringement is minor and outweighed by the expected social value of the research and obtaining consent is impracticable.

Read the Full Article !

Read the Full Article

bioethics human rights human subjects research research

30 Most Unethical Psychology Human Experiments

Disturbing human experiments aren’t something the average person thinks too much about. Rather, the progress achieved in the last 150 years of human history is an accomplishment we’re reminded of almost daily. Achievements made in biomedicine and the f ield of psychology mean that we no longer need to worry about things like deadly diseases or masturbation as a form of insanity. For better or worse, we have developed more effective ways to gather information, treat skin abnormalities, and even kill each other. But what we are not constantly reminded of are the human lives that have been damaged or lost in the name of this progress. The following is a list of the 30 most disturbing human experiments in history.

30. The Tearoom Sex Study

Image Source Sociologist Laud Humphreys often wondered about the men who commit impersonal sexual acts with one another in public restrooms. He wondered why “tearoom sex” — fellatio in public restrooms — led to the majority of homosexual arrests in the United States. Humphreys decided to become a “watchqueen” (the person who keeps watch and coughs when a cop or stranger get near) for his Ph.D. dissertation at Washington University. Throughout his research, Humphreys observed hundreds of acts of fellatio and interviewed many of the participants. He found that 54% of his subjects were married, and 38% were very clearly neither bisexual or homosexual. Humphreys’ research shattered a number of stereotypes held by both the public and law enforcement.

29. Prison Inmates as Test Subjects

Image Source In 1951, Dr. Albert M. Kligman, a dermatologist at the University of Pennsylvania and future inventor of Retin-A, began experimenting on inmates at Philadelphia’s Holmesburg Prison. As Kligman later told a newspaper reporter, “All I saw before me were acres of skin. It was like a farmer seeing a field for the first time.” Over the next 20 years, inmates willingly allowed Kligman to use their bodies in experiments involving toothpaste, deodorant, shampoo, skin creams, detergents, liquid diets, eye drops, foot powders, and hair dyes. Though the tests required constant biopsies and painful procedures, none of the inmates experienced long-term harm.

28. Henrietta Lacks

Image Source In 1955, Henrietta Lacks, a poor, uneducated African-American woman from Baltimore, was the unwitting source of cells which where then cultured for the purpose of medical research. Though researchers had tried to grow cells before, Henrietta’s were the first successfully kept alive and cloned. Henrietta’s cells, known as HeLa cells, have been instrumental in the development of the polio vaccine, cancer research, AIDS research, gene mapping, and countless other scientific endeavors. Henrietta died penniless and was buried without a tombstone in a family cemetery. For decades, her husband and five children were left in the dark about their wife and mother’s amazing contribution to modern medicine.

27. Project QKHILLTOP

Image Source In 1954, the CIA developed an experiment called Project QKHILLTOP to study Chinese brainwashing techniques, which they then used to develop new methods of interrogation. Leading the research was Dr. Harold Wolff of Cornell University Medical School. After requesting that the CIA provide him with information on imprisonment, deprivation, humiliation, torture, brainwashing, hypnoses, and more, Wolff’s research team began to formulate a plan through which they would develop secret drugs and various brain damaging procedures. According to a letter he wrote, in order to fully test the effects of the harmful research, Wolff expected the CIA to “make available suitable subjects.”

26. Stateville Penitentiary Malaria Study

Image Source During World War II, malaria and other tropical diseases were impeding the efforts of American military in the Pacific. In order to get a grip, the Malaria Research Project was established at Stateville Penitentiary in Joliet, Illinois. Doctors from the University of Chicago exposed 441 volunteer inmates to bites from malaria-infected mosquitos. Though one inmate died of a heart attack, researchers insisted his death was unrelated to the study. The widely-praised experiment continued at Stateville for 29 years, and included the first human test of Primaquine, a medication still used in the treatment of malaria and Pneumocystis pneumonia.

25. Emma Eckstein and Sigmund Freud

Image Source Despite seeking the help of Sigmund Freud for vague symptoms like stomach ailments and slight depression, 27-year old Emma Eckstein was “treated” by the German doctor for hysteria and excessive masturbation, a habit then considered dangerous to mental health. Emma’s treatment included a disturbing experimental surgery in which she was anesthetized with only a local anesthetic and cocaine before the inside of her nose was cauterized. Not surprisingly, Emma’s surgery was a disaster. Whether Emma was a legitimate medical patient or a source of more amorous interest for Freud, as a recent movie suggests, Freud continued to treat Emma for three years.

24. Dr. William Beaumont and the Stomach

Image Source In 1822, a fur trader on Mackinac Island in Michigan was accidentally shot in the stomach and treated by Dr. William Beaumont. Despite dire predictions, the fur trader survived — but with a hole (fistula) in his stomach that never healed. Recognizing the unique opportunity to observe the digestive process, Beaumont began conducting experiments. Beaumont would tie food to a string, then insert it through the hole in the trader’s stomach. Every few hours, Beaumont would remove the food to observe how it had been digested. Though gruesome, Beaumont’s experiments led to the worldwide acceptance that digestion was a chemical, not a mechanical, process.

23. Electroshock Therapy on Children

Image Source In the 1960s, Dr. Lauretta Bender of New York’s Creedmoor Hospital began what she believed to be a revolutionary treatment for children with social issues — electroshock therapy. Bender’s methods included interviewing and analyzing a sensitive child in front of a large group, then applying a gentle amount of pressure to the child’s head. Supposedly, any child who moved with the pressure was showing early signs of schizophrenia. Herself the victim of a misunderstood childhood, Bender was said to be unsympathetic to the children in her care. By the time her treatments were shut down, Bender had used electroshock therapy on over 100 children, the youngest of whom was age three.

22. Project Artichoke

Image Source In the 1950s, the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence ran a series of mind control projects in an attempt to answer the question “Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature?” One of these programs, Project Artichoke, studied hypnosis, forced morphine addiction, drug withdrawal, and the use of chemicals to incite amnesia in unwitting human subjects. Though the project was eventually shut down in the mid-1960s, the project opened the door to extensive research on the use of mind-control in field operations.

21. Hepatitis in Mentally Disabled Children

Image Source In the 1950s, Willowbrook State School, a New York state-run institution for mentally handicapped children, began experiencing outbreaks of hepatitis. Due to unsanitary conditions, it was virtually inevitable that these children would contract hepatitis. Dr. Saul Krugman, sent to investigate the outbreak, proposed an experiment that would assist in developing a vaccine. However, the experiment required deliberately infecting children with the disease. Though Krugman’s study was controversial from the start, critics were eventually silenced by the permission letters obtained from each child’s parents. In reality, offering one’s child to the experiment was oftentimes the only way to guarantee admittance into the overcrowded institution.

20. Operation Midnight Climax

Image Source Initially established in the 1950s as a sub-project of a CIA-sponsored, mind-control research program, Operation Midnight Climax sought to study the effects of LSD on individuals. In San Francisco and New York, unconsenting subjects were lured to safehouses by prostitutes on the CIA payroll, unknowingly given LSD and other mind-altering substances, and monitored from behind one-way glass. Though the safehouses were shut down in 1965, when it was discovered that the CIA was administering LSD to human subjects, Operation Midnight Climax was a theater for extensive research on sexual blackmail, surveillance technology, and the use of mind-altering drugs on field operations.

19. Study of Humans Accidentally Exposed to Fallout Radiation

Image Source The 1954 “Study of Response of Human Beings exposed to Significant Beta and Gamma Radiation due to Fall-out from High-Yield Weapons,” known better as Project 4.1, was a medical study conducted by the U.S. of residents of the Marshall Islands. When the Castle Bravo nuclear test resulted in a yield larger than originally expected, the government instituted a top secret study to “evaluate the severity of radiation injury” to those accidentally exposed. Though most sources agree the exposure was unintentional, many Marshallese believed Project 4.1 was planned before the Castle Bravo test. In all, 239 Marshallese were exposed to significant levels of radiation.

18. The Monster Study

Image Source In 1939, University of Iowa researchers Wendell Johnson and Mary Tudor conducted a stuttering experiment on 22 orphan children in Davenport, Iowa. The children were separated into two groups, the first of which received positive speech therapy where children were praised for speech fluency. In the second group, children received negative speech therapy and were belittled for every speech imperfection. Normal-speaking children in the second group developed speech problems which they then retained for the rest of their lives. Terrified by the news of human experiments conducted by the Nazis, Johnson and Tudor never published the results of their “Monster Study.”

17. Project MKUltra

Image Source Project MKUltra is the code name of a CIA-sponsored research operation that experimented in human behavioral engineering. From 1953 to 1973, the program employed various methodologies to manipulate the mental states of American and Canadian citizens. These unwitting human test subjects were plied with LSD and other mind-altering drugs, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, and various forms of torture. Research occurred at universities, hospitals, prisons, and pharmaceutical companies. Though the project sought to develop “chemical […] materials capable of employment in clandestine operations,” Project MKUltra was ended by a Congress-commissioned investigation into CIA activities within the U.S.

16. Experiments on Newborns

Image Source In the 1960s, researchers at the University of California began an experiment to study changes in blood pressure and blood flow. The researchers used 113 newborns ranging in age from one hour to three days old as test subjects. In one experiment, a catheter was inserted through the umbilical arteries and into the aorta. The newborn’s feet were then immersed in ice water for the purpose of testing aortic pressure. In another experiment, up to 50 newborns were individually strapped onto a circumcision board, then tilted so that their blood rushed to their head and their blood pressure could be monitored.

15. The Aversion Project

Image Source In 1969, during South Africa’s detestable Apartheid era, thousands of homosexuals were handed over to the care of Dr. Aubrey Levin, an army colonel and psychologist convinced he could “cure” homosexuals. At the Voortrekkerhoogte military hospital near Pretoria, Levin used electroconvulsive aversion therapy to “reorientate” his patients. Electrodes were strapped to a patient’s upper arm with wires running to a dial calibrated from 1 to 10. Homosexual men were shown pictures of a naked man and encouraged to fantasize, at which point the patient was subjected to severe shocks. When Levin was warned that he would be named an abuser of human rights, he emigrated to Canada where he currently works at a teaching hospital.

14. Medical Experiments on Prison Inmates

Image Source Perhaps one benefit of being an inmate at California’s San Quentin prison is the easy access to acclaimed Bay Area doctors. But if that’s the case, then a downside is that these doctors also have easy access to inmates. From 1913 to 1951, Dr. Leo Stanley, chief surgeon at San Quentin, used prisoners as test subjects in a variety of bizarre medical experiments. Stanley’s experiments included sterilization and potential treatments for the Spanish Flu. In one particularly disturbing experiment, Stanley performed testicle transplants on living prisoners using testicles from executed prisoners and, in some cases, from goats and boars.

13. Sexual Reassignment

Image Source In 1965, Canadian David Peter Reimer was born biologically male. But at seven months old, his penis was accidentally destroyed during an unconventional circumcision by cauterization. John Money, a psychologist and proponent of the idea that gender is learned, convinced the Reimers that their son would be more likely to achieve a successful, functional sexual maturation as a girl. Though Money continued to report only success over the years, David’s own account insisted that he had never identified as female. He spent his childhood teased, ostracized, and seriously depressed. At age 38, David committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.

12. Effect of Radiation on Testicles

Image Source Between 1963 and 1973, dozens of Washington and Oregon prison inmates were used as test subjects in an experiment designed to test the effects of radiation on testicles. Bribed with cash and the suggestion of parole, 130 inmates willingly agreed to participate in the experiments conducted by the University of Washington on behalf of the U.S. government. In most cases, subjects were zapped with over 400 rads of radiation (the equivalent of 2,400 chest x-rays) in 10 minute intervals. However, it was much later that the inmates learned the experiments were far more dangerous than they had been told. In 2000, the former participants settled a $2.4 million class-action settlement from the University.

11. Stanford Prison Experiment

Image Source Conducted at Stanford University from August 14-20, 1971, the Stanford Prison Experiment was an investigation into the causes of conflict between military guards and prisoners. Twenty-four male students were chosen and randomly assigned roles of prisoners and guards. They were then situated in a specially-designed mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. Those subjects assigned to be guards enforced authoritarian measures and subjected the prisoners to psychological torture. Surprisingly, many of the prisoners accepted the abuses. Though the experiment exceeded the expectations of all of the researchers, it was abruptly ended after only six days.

10. Syphilis Experiments in Guatemala

Image Source From 1946 to 1948, the United States government, Guatemalan president Juan José Arévalo, and some Guatemalan health ministries, cooperated in a disturbing human experiment on unwitting Guatemalan citizens. Doctors deliberately infected soldiers, prostitutes, prisoners, and mental patients with syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases in an attempt to track their untreated natural progression. Treated only with antibiotics, the experiment resulted in at least 30 documented deaths. In 2010, the United States made a formal apology to Guatemala for their involvement in these experiments.

9. Tuskegee Syphilis Study

Image Source In 1932, the U.S. Public Health Service began working with the Tuskegee Institute to track the natural progression of untreated syphilis. Six hundred poor, illiterate, male sharecroppers were found and hired in Macon County, Alabama. Of the 600 men, only 399 had previously contracted syphilis, and none were told they had a life threatening disease. Instead, they were told they were receiving free healthcare, meals, and burial insurance in exchange for participating. Even after Penicillin was proven an effective cure for syphilis in 1947, the study continued until 1972. In addition to the original subjects, victims of the study included wives who contracted the disease, and children born with congenital syphilis. In 1997, President Bill Clinton formally apologized to those affected by what is often called the “most infamous biomedical experiment in U.S. history.”

8. Milgram Experiment

In 1961, Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, began a series of social psychology experiments that measured the willingness of test subjects to obey an authority figure. Conducted only three months after the start of the trial of German Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, Milgram’s experiment sought to answer the question, “Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders?” In the experiment, two participants (one secretly an actor and one an unwitting test subject) were separated into two rooms where they could hear, but not see, each other. The test subject would then read a series of questions to the actor, punishing each wrong answer with an electric shock. Though many people would indicate their desire to stop the experiment, almost all subjects continued when they were told they would not be held responsible, or that there would not be any permanent damage.

7. Infected Mosquitos in Towns

In 1956 and 1957, the United States Army conducted a number of biological warfare experiments on the cities of Savannah, Georgia and Avon Park, Florida. In one such experiment, millions of infected mosquitos were released into the two cities, in order to see if the insects could spread yellow fever and dengue fever. Not surprisingly, hundreds of researchers contracted illnesses that included fevers, respiratory problems, stillbirths, encephalitis, and typhoid. In order to photograph the results of their experiments, Army researchers pretended to be public health workers. Several people died as a result of the research.

6. Human Experimentation in the Soviet Union

Beginning in 1921 and continuing for most of the 21st century, the Soviet Union employed poison laboratories known as Laboratory 1, Laboratory 12, and Kamera as covert research facilities of the secret police agencies. Prisoners from the Gulags were exposed to a number of deadly poisons, the purpose of which was to find a tasteless, odorless chemical that could not be detected post mortem. Tested poisons included mustard gas, ricin, digitoxin, and curare, among others. Men and women of varying ages and physical conditions were brought to the laboratories and given the poisons as “medication,” or part of a meal or drink.

5. Human Experimentation in North Korea

Image Source Several North Korean defectors have described witnessing disturbing cases of human experimentation. In one alleged experiment, 50 healthy women prisoners were given poisoned cabbage leaves — all 50 women were dead within 20 minutes. Other described experiments include the practice of surgery on prisoners without anesthesia, purposeful starvation, beating prisoners over the head before using the zombie-like victims for target practice, and chambers in which whole families are murdered with suffocation gas. It is said that each month, a black van known as “the crow” collects 40-50 people from a camp and takes them to an known location for experiments.

4. Nazi Human Experimentation

Image Source Over the course of the Third Reich and the Holocaust, Nazi Germany conducted a series of medical experiments on Jews, POWs, Romani, and other persecuted groups. The experiments were conducted in concentration camps, and in most cases resulted in death, disfigurement, or permanent disability. Especially disturbing experiments included attempts to genetically manipulate twins; bone, muscle, and nerve transplantation; exposure to diseases and chemical gasses; sterilization, and anything else the infamous Nazi doctors could think up. After the war, these crimes were tried as part of the Nuremberg Trial and ultimately led to the development of the Nuremberg Code of medical ethics.

3. Unit 731

Image Source From 1937 to 1945, the imperial Japanese Army developed a covert biological and chemical warfare research experiment called Unit 731. Based in the large city of Harbin, Unit 731 was responsible for some of the most atrocious war crimes in history. Chinese and Russian subjects — men, women, children, infants, the elderly, and pregnant women — were subjected to experiments which included the removal of organs from a live body, amputation for the study of blood loss, germ warfare attacks, and weapons testing. Some prisoners even had their stomachs surgically removed and their esophagus reattached to the intestines. Many of the scientists involved in Unit 731 rose to prominent careers in politics, academia, business, and medicine.

2. Radioactive Materials in Pregnant Women

Image Source Shortly after World War II, with the impending Cold War forefront on the minds of Americans, many medical researchers were preoccupied with the idea of radioactivity and chemical warfare. In an experiment at Vanderbilt University, 829 pregnant women were given “vitamin drinks” they were told would improve the health of their unborn babies. Instead, the drinks contained radioactive iron and the researchers were studying how quickly the radioisotope crossed into the placenta. At least seven of the babies later died from cancers and leukemia, and the women themselves experienced rashes, bruises, anemia, loss of hair and tooth, and cancer.

1. Mustard Gas Tested on American Military

Image Source In 1943, the U.S. Navy exposed its own sailors to mustard gas. Officially, the Navy was testing the effectiveness of new clothing and gas masks against the deadly gas that had proven so terrifying in the first World War. The worst of the experiments occurred at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington. Seventeen and 18-year old boys were approached after eight weeks of boot camp and asked if they wanted to participate in an experiment that would help shorten the war. Only when the boys reached the Research Laboratory were they told the experiment involved mustard gas. The participants, almost all of whom suffered severe external and internal burns, were ignored by the Navy and, in some cases, threatened with the Espionage Act. In 1991, the reports were finally declassified and taken before Congress.

28. Prison Inmates as Test Subjects Henrietta Lacks 26. Project QKHILLTOP 25. Stateville Penitentiary Malaria Study Stateville Penitentiary Malaria Study: Primaquine 24. Emma Eckstein 23. Dr. William Beaumont Dr. William Beaumont 21. Electroshock Therapy on Children 21. Project Artichoke 20. Operation Midnight Climax 19. Study of Humans Accidentally Exposed to Fallout Radiation 18. The Monster Experiment 17. Project MKUltra 16. Experiments on Newborns 15. The Aversion Project 14. Medical Experiments on Prison Inmates 13. Sexual Reassignment 12. Effect of Radiation on Testicles 11. Stanford Prison Experiment 10. Syphilis Experiment in Guatemala 9. Tuskegee Syphilis Study 8. Milgram Experiment 7. Infected Mosquitos in Towns 6. Human Experimentation in the Soviet Union 5. Human Experimentation in North Korea 4. Nazi Human Experimentation 3. Unit 731 2. Radioactive Materials in Pregnant Women 1. Mustard Gas Tested on American Military

Psychology Education
Bachelors in Psychology
Masters in Psychology
Doctorate in Psychology
Psychology Resources
Psychology License
Psychology Salary
Psychology Career
Psychology Major
What is Psychology
Up & Coming Programs
Top 10 Up and Coming Undergraduate Psychology Programs in the South
Top 10 Up and Coming Undergraduate Psychology Programs in the Midwest
Top 10 Up and Coming Undergraduate Psychology Programs in the West
Top 10 Up and Coming Undergraduate Psychology Programs in the East
Best Psychology Degrees Scholarship Opportunity
The Pursuit of Excellence in Psychology Scholarship is Now Closed
Meet Gemma: Our First Psychology Scholarship Winner
50 Most Affordable Clinical Psychology Graduate Programs
50 Most Affordable Selective Small Colleges for a Psychology Degree
The 50 Best Schools for Psychology: Undergraduate Edition
30 Great Small Colleges for a Counseling Degree (Bachelor’s)
Top 10 Best Online Bachelors in Psychology Degree Programs
Top 10 Online Child Psychology Degree Programs
10 Best Online Forensic Psychology Degree Programs
Top 10 Online Master’s in Psychology Degree Programs
Top 15 Most Affordable School Psychology Programs
Top 20 Most Innovative Graduate Psychology Degree Programs
Top 8 Online Sports Psychology Degree Programs
Recent Posts
Does Psychology Require Math? – Requirements for Psychology Majors
10 Classes You Will Take as a Psychology Major
Top 15 Highest-Paying Jobs with a Master’s Degree in Psychology
The Highest Paying Jobs with an Associate’s Degree in Psychology
The Highest-Paying Jobs with a Bachelor’s in Psychology
Should I Major in Psychology?
How to Become a CBT Therapist
What is a Social Psychologist?
How to Become a Clinical Neuropsychologist
MA vs. MS in Psychology: What’s the Difference?
PsyD vs. PhD in Psychology: What’s the Difference?
What Can You Do with a Master’s in Psychology?
What Can You Do With A PhD in Psychology?
Master’s in Child Psychology Guide
Master’s in Counseling Psychology – A Beginner’s Guide
Master’s in Forensic Psychology – A Beginner’s Guide
8 Reasons to Become a Marriage and Family Therapist
What Do Domestic Violence & Abuse Counselors Do?
What Training is Needed to Be a Psychologist for People of the LGBTQ Community?
15 Inspiring TED Talks on Intelligence and Critical Thinking
The 30 Most Inspiring Personal Growth and Development Blogs
30 Most Prominent Psychologists on Twitter
New Theory Discredits the Myth that Individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome Lack Empathy
10 Crazy Things Famous People Have Believed
Psychology Infographics
Top Infographics About Psychology
The Birth Order Effect [Infographic]
The Psychology of Dogs [Infographic]
Can Going Green Improve Your Mental Health? [Infographic]
Surprising Alternative Treatments for Mental Disorders [Infographic]
What Can Humans Learn From Animals? [Infographic]

JAVASCRIPT IS DISABLED. Please enable JavaScript on your browser to best view this site.

Japan's Biological Warfare Project

Experiments.

Harbin museum
Yoshio Shinozuka
Documentaries

Unit 731 and Unit 100 were the two biological warfare research centres set up in spite of the Geneva Protocol of 1925 banning biological and chemical warfare.

Led by Lieutenant-General Ishii Shiro, 3,000 Japanese researchers working at Unit 731’s headquarters in Harbin infected live human beings with diseases such as the plague and anthrax and then eviscerated them without anesthesia to see how the diseases infected human organs.

Because of the Unit’s secret nature, there is no complete list of the experiments that were undertaken by Unit 731.

Testimonies from participants shed some light about parts of the experiments. An anonymous medical assistant described in a 1995 New York Times interview his first vivisection:

“The fellow knew that it was over for him, and so he didn’t struggle when they led him into the room and tied him down. But when I picked up the scalpel, that’s when he began screaming. I cut him open from the chest to the stomach, and he screamed terribly, and his face was all twisted in agony. He made this unimaginable sound, he was screaming so horribly. But then finally he stopped. This was all in a day’s work for the surgeons, but it really left an impression on me because it was my first time.”

But the Unit was not only infamous for its vivisections. Some prisoners sent to Unit 731 were taken outside and tied to stakes. The Japanese would then test new biological weapons such as plague cultures or bombs filled with plague-infested fleas on them.

Other studies involved exposing human guinea pigs, called ‘logs’ by the Japanese scientists, to their limits. Humans were locked inside pressure chambers to test how much the body could take before their eyes popped out.

Some human test subjects were taken outside during the harsh winter until their limbs froze off for the doctors to experiment how best to treat frostbite.

Since the Japanese army used poison gas during the war, one of the Unit 731’s mission was to develop a more potent poison gas, thus prisoners were subjected to poisoning.

In 1984, a graduate student at Keio Medical University in Tokyo found records of human experiments in a bookstore. The pages described the effects of massive dosages of tetanus vaccine. There were tables describing the length of time it took victims to die and recorded the muscle spasms in their bodies.

At least 3,000 people, not just Chinese but also Russians, Mongolians and Koreans, died from the experiments performed by Unit 731 between 1939 and 1945. No prisoner came out alive of the Unit’s gates. During the war, the Japanese Imperial Army used biological weapons developed and manufactured by Unit 731’s laboratory in Harbin throughout China, killing or injuring an estimated 300,000 people.

Experiments on Live Human Brain Tissue Yield Unexpected Findings

These findings may have implications for brain disease, disorders.

Scientists at the Krembil Brain Institute, part of University Health Network (UHN), in collaboration with colleagues at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), have used precious and rare access to live human cortical tissue to identify functionally important features that make human neurons unique.

This experimental work is among the first of its kind on live human neurons and one of the largest studies of the diversity of human cortical pyramidal cells to date.

“The goal of this study was to understand what makes human brain cells ‘human,’ and how human neuron circuitry functions as it does,” says Dr. Taufik Valiante, neurosurgeon, scientist at the Krembil Brain Institute at UHN and co-senior author on the paper.

“In our study, we wanted to understand how human pyramidal cells, the major class of neurons in the neocortex, differ between the upper and bottom layers of the neocortex,” says Dr. Shreejoy Tripathy, a scientist with the Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics at CAMH and co-senior author on this study.

“In particular, we wanted to understand how electrical features of these neurons might support different aspects of cross-layer communication and the generation of brain rhythms, which are known to be disrupted in brain diseases like epilepsy.”

With consent, the team used brain tissue immediately after it had been removed during routine surgery from the brains of patients with epilepsy and tumors. Using state-of-the-art techniques, the team was then able to characterize properties of individual cells within slices of this tissue, including visualizations of their detailed morphologies.

“Little is known about the shapes and electrical properties of living adult human neurons because of the rarity of obtaining living human brain tissue, as there are few opportunities other than epilepsy surgery to obtain such recordings,” says Dr. Valiante.

To keep the resected tissue alive, it is immediately transferred into the modified cerebrospinal fluid in the operating room then taken directly into the laboratory where it is prepared for experimental characterization.

It is rare to study human tissue because accessing human tissue for scientific inquiries requires a tight-knit multidisciplinary community, including patients willing to participate in the studies, ethicists ensuring patient rights and safety, neurosurgeons collecting and delivering samples, and neuroscientists with necessary research facilities to study these tissues.

After initial analysis, members of the Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics used further large-scale data analysis to identify the properties that distinguished neurons in this cohort from each other. These properties were then compared to those from other centers doing similar work with human brain tissue samples, including the Allen Institute for Brain Sciences in Seattle, Washington.

Noted in the team’s findings:

A massive amount of diversity among human neocortical pyramidal cells
Distinct electrophysiological features between neurons located at different layers in the human neocortex
Specific features of deeper-layer neurons enabling them to support aspects of across-layer communication and the generation of functionally important brain rhythms

The teams also found notable and unexpected differences between their findings and similar experiments in pre-clinical models, which Dr. Tripathy believes is likely reflective of the massive expansion of the human neocortex over mammalian and primate evolution.

“These results showcase the notable diversity of human cortical pyramidal neurons, differences between similarly classified human and pre-clinical neurons, and a plausible hypothesis for the generation of human cortical theta rhythms driven by deep layer neurons,” says Dr. Homeira Moradi Chameh, a scientific associate in Dr. Valiante’s laboratory at Krembil Brain Institute and lead author on the study.

In total, the team was able to characterize over 200 neurons from 61 patients, reflecting the largest dataset of its kind to date and encapsulating almost a decade’s worth of painstaking work at UHN and the Krembil Brain Institute.

“This unique data set will allow us to build computational models of the distinctly human brain, which will be invaluable for the study of distinctly human neuropathologies,” says Dr. Scott Rich, a postdoctoral research fellow in Dr. Valiante’s laboratory at the Krembil Brain Institute and co-author on this work.

“For instance, the cellular properties driving many of the unique features identified in these neurons are known to be altered in certain types of epilepsy. By implementing these features in computational models, we can study how these alterations affect dynamics at the various spatial scales of the human brain related to epilepsy, and facilitate the translation of these ‘basic science’ findings back to the clinic and potentially into motivations for new avenues in epilepsy research.”

“This effort was only possible because of the very large and active epilepsy program at the Krembil Brain Institute at UHN, one of the largest programs of its kind in the world and the largest program of its kind in Canada,” says Dr. Valiante.

Reference: “Diversity amongst human cortical pyramidal neurons revealed via their sag currents and frequency preferences” by Homeira Moradi Chameh, Scott Rich, Lihua Wang, Fu-Der Chen, Liang Zhang, Peter L. Carlen, Shreejoy J. Tripathy and Taufik A. Valiante, 3 May 2021, Nature Communications . DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-22741-9

Nih researchers uncover brain damage in covid-19 patients, despite no infection of the brain, a major malformation illustrates the incredible plasticity of the human brain, “you do not want to mess with this virus” – research strongly suggests covid-19 virus enters the brain, rapid mental rejuvenation: experimental drug reverses age-related cognitive decline within days, can drinking cocoa make you smarter cocoa flavanols found to boost brain oxygenation and cognition, specialized scanning reveals brain damage in covid-19 patients, century-old scientific debate settled: anesthesia’s effect on consciousness solved, chasing the rush: sugar actually changes the chemistry of your brain, new way to treat hypersensitivity to noise and other neurological disorders, 15 comments.

Brain disease like Epilepsy can be cured.This is plesant to have new findings on brain cells neurons.Utilization of remaining fraction of brain cell and stem cell genetation within brain are some facts of worth.Efficient Electro-Therapy is important.Genetic factors contribute a fraction to the diseade can also be healed specificly which are delinked.

New brain cells or neurons have been foud,is a very good news.Cure of disease like epilepsy is now qùite possiblo.Electro-therapy is useful in such disease.Often delinked genetic stuff in brain which makes disease compĺicate must be paid attention.Another fact is reutilise remaing part of brain cell and generatig stem cell to possibilities.

But what happens when you keep a part of someone’s brain alive, is it still a thinking conscious part or is it no longer human?

Im living w/ Aspergers syndrome. Where is that ” disorder” even though negro Jesus made me this way??

This is trash science. Taking damaged/malfunctioning tissue and pretending they can determine how normal Grey matter works is laughable. If it was like normal tissue these patients wouldn’t be suffering. The schools where the PI work and got their should be defunded.

Just my 2 cents… Jb

Scitech daily won’t let me post this comment. I will post the screen shots to every other platform I can.

My goodness. A live human brain? What if unknowingly they were working while their consciousness was still in play. Couldn’t the brain suffer feelings and thoughts of infinite proportion. Say the perception of time was not in tact and they were forced to re-live their whole life or something like that?

As an epileptic, this study is amazing.

I am literally crying, because this makes me so happy and hopeful for the future of all epileptic patients.

This is incredibly unethical; reminding me of Nazi experiments, as well as experiments done in South America 50 years later.

Of course someone with OUT Epilepsy would think this is unethical. How can science grow and cures for diseases be found if they don’t study the most intricate part of the human body? Only idiotic people would think this is unethical. 🤦‍♀️

When others are willing to participate and consent is given under full truthful disclosure to a humane research need and any gained understanding of knownlegde is at best intentions of its findings documented with its delibertacy to benefit others is not at any point a Frankenstein experiment. With the complexity of the human brain and all the parts of its components ins every changing adapting and working abilities its the highest priority in human well being both mental and physical and surprisingly spiritual to achieve the pinnacle of quality of life. Keep this in mind before you give your irresponsible , arrogant, short sighted opinions. It is the bravest act of any human being to say yes . Because with it there are unknown , adverse, and terrifing consequences.

If someone donates there body to science to help humanity what a great person to give to others and not be stuck on a old ideology or others fears or believes,thats should be respected not used as to discrete people working to improve and advance peoples lives and health go and pray for some compaction and understanding

Giving your body to science is the most selfless thing you can do. Trying to stop others from progressing science and preventing use of their bodies as they like is the most selfish thing anyone can do. Period.

I’d like to give my thanks to the brave human being who volunteered to this. Your patronage will help us all go farther, thank you.

Hello, I have a Complex disease and I have reached out to research universities about studying my case. I want to give opportunity to understand and observe complex system damage.

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.

Costs, Scholarships & Aid
Campus Life
Faculty & Staff
Family & Visitors
DFW Community
Galaxy Login
Academic Calendar
Human Resources
Accessibility

Researchers Create Solution That Makes Living Skin Transparent

In a pioneering new study, researchers made the skin on the skulls and abdomens of live mice transparent by applying to the areas a mixture of water and a common yellow food coloring called tartrazine.

Dr. Zihao Ou , assistant professor of physics at The University of Texas at Dallas, is lead author of the study, published online Sept. 5 in the journal Science .

Living skin is a scattering medium. Like fog, it scatters light, which is why it cannot be seen through.

“We combined the yellow dye, which is a molecule that absorbs most light, especially blue and ultraviolet light, with skin, which is a scattering medium. Individually, these two things block most light from getting through them. But when we put them together, we were able to achieve transparency of the mouse skin,” said Ou, who, with colleagues, conducted the study while he was a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University before joining the UT Dallas faculty in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics in August.

“For those who understand the fundamental physics behind this, it makes sense; but if you aren’t familiar with it, it looks like a magic trick,” Ou said.

The “magic” happens because dissolving the light-absorbing molecules in water changes the solution’s refractive index — a measure of the way a substance bends light — in a way that matches the refractive index of tissue components like lipids. In essence, the dye molecules reduce the degree to which light scatters in the skin tissue, like dissipating a fog bank.

In their experiments with mice, the researchers rubbed the water and dye solution onto the skin of the animals’ skulls and abdomens. Once the dye had completely diffused into the skin, the skin became transparent. The process is reversible by washing off any remaining dye. The dye that has diffused into the skin is metabolized and excreted through urine.

“It takes a few minutes for the transparency to appear,” Ou said. “It’s similar to the way a facial cream or mask works: The time needed depends on how fast the molecules diffuse into the skin.”

Through the transparent skin of the skull, researchers directly observed blood vessels on the surface of the brain. In the abdomen, they observed internal organs and peristalsis, the muscle contractions that move contents through the digestive tract.

“It’s important that the dye is biocompatible — it’s safe for living organisms. In addition, it’s very inexpensive and efficient; we don’t need very much of it to work.” Dr. Zihao Ou, assistant professor of physics

The transparent areas take on an orangish color, Ou said. The dye used in the solution is commonly known as FD&C Yellow #5 and is frequently used in orange- or yellow-colored snack chips, candy coating and other foods. The Food and Drug Administration certifies nine color additives — tartrazine is one — for use in foods.

“It’s important that the dye is biocompatible — it’s safe for living organisms,” Ou said. “In addition, it’s very inexpensive and efficient; we don’t need very much of it to work.”

The researchers have not yet tested the process on humans, whose skin is about 10 times thicker than a mouse’s. At this time it is not clear what dosage of the dye or delivery method would be necessary to penetrate the entire thickness, Ou said.

“In human medicine, we currently have ultrasound to look deeper inside the living body,” Ou said. “Many medical diagnosis platforms are very expensive and inaccessible to a broad audience, but platforms based on our tech should not be.”

Home Experiment

The National Science Foundation has created an exercise for adults who want to try the Yellow #5 experiment at home using raw chicken. Check out the details and directions on this link .

Ou said one of the first applications of the technique will likely be to improve existing research methods in optical imaging.

“Our research group is mostly academics, so one of the first things we thought of when we saw the results of our experiments was how this might improve biomedical research,” he said. “Optical equipment, like the microscope, is not directly used to study live humans or animals because light can’t go through living tissue. But now that we can make tissue transparent, it will allow us to look at more detailed dynamics. It will completely revolutionize existing optical research in biology.”

In his new Dynamic Bio-imaging Lab at UTD, Ou will continue the research he started with Dr. Guosong Hong, assistant professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford and a corresponding author of the study. Ou said the next steps in the research will include understanding what dosage of the dye molecule might work best in human tissue. In addition, the researchers are experimenting with other molecules, including engineered materials, that could perform more efficiently than tartrazine.

Study authors from Stanford, including co-corresponding author Dr. Mark Brongersma, the Stephen Harris Professor of materials science and engineering, were funded by grants from federal agencies including the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. As an interdisciplinary postdoctoral scholar, Ou was supported by the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford. The researchers have applied for a patent on the technology.

About Dr. Zihao Ou

Dr. Zihao Ou earned a Bachelor of Science in physics from the University of Science and Technology of China and a doctorate in materials science and engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His doctoral research focused on electron microscopy, an imaging technology that uses beams of electrons, instead of light, to produce high-resolution, magnified images of biological and nonbiological specimens.

“I know my field very well, but after I finished my PhD, I wanted to do something that would have more of an impact on more people, rather than limit myself to materials science,” Ou said. “So I decided to learn some biological imaging techniques and bring my background in physics and materials science to biomedical science. As a postdoc, I believe my background in physical science brought a unique perspective to our biological imaging research.”

Ou said he came to UT Dallas for that same cross-disciplinary experience.

“UT Dallas researchers in mathematics, chemistry, biology and physics are really thinking about how fundamental science can be used to improve biomedical applications,” he said. “I saw this as an exciting and unique opportunity for me.”

Media Contact: Amanda Siegfried, UT Dallas, 972-883-4335, [email protected] , or the Office of Media Relations, UT Dallas, (972) 883-2155, [email protected] .

Pain Researchers Earn Scholars Award, Society Fellowship
New CPRIT Scholar Aims To Reverse-Engineer Cancer with 3D Tool
Benson Announces Plan To Step Down as President
UTD’s Next Chapter: A Letter From President Benson
Researcher Finds Sound Progress in Babies’ Speech Development
UT Dallas To Host New National Cricket League Tournament
Researchers Develop Rapid Test for Detecting Fentanyl
Geoscientists Dig into Why We May Be Alone in the Milky Way

800 W. Campbell Road Richardson, Texas 75080-3021

972-883-2111

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

STAY CONNECTED WITH UT DALLAS

Emergency Preparedness
Campus Carry
Campus Police
Required Links
Tobacco-Free Campus
Texas Veterans Portal
Work at UT Dallas
Nondiscrimination Policy
Title IX Initiatives
Student Achievements
HEERF Reporting
Counseling/Mental Health
Hazing Prevention
Public Course and Syllabus Information
Privacy Policy

War News | Military History | Military News

Japan’s world war two live human experiments revealed.

War Articles

The Nazi are not the only culprits who performed live human experiments and experimented with biological warfare during World War Two. Lately more and more elderly Japanese veterans have been coming forward with stories and memories of Unit 731, the Japanese regiment responsible during the war for thousands of experiments conducted on Chinese civilians, as well as on Soviet and US prisoners of war.

Unit 731 was led by Dr Shiro Ishii, who sanctioned thousands of tests and experiments with the ultimate aim of finding biological and chemical weapons that could be used against the Chinese. The unit was based in a complex of laboratories, operating theatres and crematoria funded by the Japanese government.

The experiments included the testing of diseases on living persons, examining the body’s processes prior to decomposition, and performing open surgery to remove internal organs and test various theories on them. The staff at the complex also infected subjects with diseases such as syphilis and the plague, and tested how live human bodies reacted to being frozen.

The unit also supported Japanese military strategy and tactics by conspiring with them on carrying out biological raids over China. One such example is the air-drop over southern China of a rice and wheat mixture carrying plague-infected fleas, which killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. Researchers have found that the Japanese even intended to attack the US with biological weapons. One plan was to have a kamikaze pilot crash his aircraft, which was carrying the plague, on the US mainland, the io9.com reports.

Once it was clear that the Japanese would have to surrender in 1945, Dr Ishii ordered the immediate destruction of as much of Unit 731 as possible. Dr Ishii and few of the unit’s scientists and staff were put on trial for war crimes. It is said that US General MacArthur had made an agreement with the Japanese to share their findings of the Unit 731 investigation with US authorities, who would ensure them immunity from prosecution. Only around 30 members of Unit 731 were put on trial — five were sentenced to be executed and the rest were put on parole. Dr Ishii avoided sentencing and worked for the US government in weapons research.

Lately more and more veterans of Unit 731 are coming forward to tell their stories of such war time experiments. Some speak of live experiments on young Philippine women to investigate female anatomy. The Japanese thought the women were Allied spies, and so they believed the experiments were acceptable. One nurse saw human remains being eaten by dogs, while another staff member remembers the human body of a Westerner cut in two and preserved from head to toe in formaldehyde.

Mass graves have gradually been uncovered since the end of World War Two. Construction workers found a mass of bones buried beneath the ground in China in 1989 as well as buried chemical weapons in Heilongjiang, a province the Japanese occupied during the war.

A human embryo grown in a lab without a sperm or egg could be a revolutionary new way to test medicines that may help prevent miscarriage and genetic diseases

Scientists used stem cells to create a model of an embryo in the lab without sperm or egg.
The model embryo released the same hormones that trigger positive pregnancy tests.
Researchers hope to use this model to understand early development, miscarriage, and genetic disease.

We know a lot about how babies are made, but not everything. Scientists understand surprisingly little about the early days of embryo growth , when our cells organize and begin to form our bodies.

Researchers brought us one step closer to understanding those early days by making a model of a human embryo in the lab, without using sperm or eggs . They published their findings in the journal Nature.

"The drama is in the first month, the remaining eight months of pregnancy are mainly lots of growth," Jacob Hanna, a co-author of the study who researches molecular genetics at the Weizmann Institute of Science, said in an Institutional press release.

Most miscarriages happen within the first 11 weeks of a pregnancy, according to Mayo Clinic. These models could help scientists understand what can go wrong early on in these developmental stages in order to try to prevent them, Hanna said in the press release.

He also said the models could be used to determine how genetic diseases develop as well as birth defects.

How scientists grew a model human embryo without a sperm or egg

In order to accomplish this feat, the team turned to stem cells. Stem cells are cells that form other, more complex cell types depending on what messages the body sends them. The Mayo Clinic calls them "the body's raw materials."

Watch: The real reason we still haven't cloned humans

Main content

September 5, 2024

Scientists Make Living Mice’s Skin Transparent with Simple Food Dye

New research harnessed the highly absorbent dye tartrazine, used as the common food coloring Yellow No. 5, to turn tissues in living mice clear—temporarily revealing organs and vessels inside the animals

By Lauren J. Young

Skin normally scatters light, a phenomenon represented by white lines in the beginning of this clip. When the food, drug and cosmetic dye Yellow No. 5 is absorbed by skin, however, it reduces scattering and allows light to penetrate deeper, making the tissue transparent. (This technique has not been tested on humans. Dyes may be harmful. Always exercise caution with dyes and do not consume them directly, apply them to people or animals or otherwise misuse them.)

Keyi “Onyx” Li/U.S. National Science Foundation

In mere minutes, smearing mice with a common food dye can make a desired portion of their skin almost as transparent as glass.

In a study published today in Science, researchers spread a solution of the dye tartrazine, a common coloring for foods, drugs and cosmetics, onto living mice to turn their tissues clear —creating a temporary window that revealed organs, muscles and blood vessels in their body. The procedure—a new form of a technique known as “optical tissue clearing”—has not yet been tested in humans, but it may someday offer a way to view and monitor injuries or diseases without the need of specialized imaging equipment or invasive surgery.

“One unique part about our strategy is that we are changing the optical properties of the tissue directly,” says the study’s lead author Zihao Ou, a physicist at the University of Texas at Dallas.

On supporting science journalism

If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing . By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.

Skin, like most mammalian tissue, is highly opaque because its mix of water and densely packed lipids, proteins and other essential molecules scatters light in all different directions. “The concept is similar to bubbled water,” Ou explains. “When you have water and air, both of them are transparent separately. However, if you mix them together, you form microbubbles that are no longer transparent.” Think of a rushing river or a crashing wave. The change in clarity comes because water and air molecules have different refractive indexes—the amount of light that bends passing through an object or substance. The fats and proteins in rodent and human skin typically have higher refractive indexes than the water, which creates a contrast that you can’t see through. In the new study, Ou and his colleagues looked for light-absorbing molecules that could make the various refractive indexes within the layers of skin more similar—essentially reducing the amount of light scattered throughout.

Photographs of scattering phantoms composed of agarose hydrogels containing increasing concentrations of tartrazine while keeping the concentration of silica particles the same. Scale bars: 5 mm

Photographs of “scattering phantoms,” or samples that mimic the optical distribution of human tissue, composed of agarose hydrogels. The phantoms contain increasing concentrations of tartrazine and the same concentration of silica particles. The scale bar represents five millimeters.

Guosong Hong/Stanford University

The team investigated 21 different synthetic dyes before landing on the highly absorbent tartrazine, more commonly known as Yellow No. 5. The zingy lemon-yellow coloring is approved by the Food and Drug Administration to be used in limited quantities in foods, drugs and cosmetics. It’s commonly found in chips, sodas, candies, butter, vitamins and drug tablets. Tartrazine makes the refractive indexes of molecules it encounters more uniform and lets through red and yellow light, similar to the color of underlying tissue. At the same time, the dye absorbs most light at wavelengths in the near-ultraviolet and blue spectrums and decreases the scattering of those types of light. “The higher the absorption, the more efficient the molecule is,” Ou explains. The FDA’s limits on chemicals and additives in foods causes the food industry to look “for chemicals that are extremely efficient,” even in small amounts.

Animated stills from a real-time imaging video show the dynamic process of a chicken breast tissue that transitions from opacity to transparency after immersion in a 0.6-molar solution of tartrazine (Yellow No. 5). The progression begins before the tartrazine solution’s application and then shows a range of 0.2 to 60 seconds after. The scale bar represents 5 mm.

The researchers tested various concentrations of the dye on “scattering phantoms” (square samples that mimic the optical distribution of human tissues) and slices of raw chicken breast. They then gently massaged the dye onto the skin of anesthetized mice, where it was absorbed like a “facial cream,” Ou says. In less than 10 minutes, the team began to see internal features beneath the top layers of tissue under visible light—rubbing tartrazine onto the animals’ stomach revealed the digestive tract in action, and spreading it onto one of their legs exposed muscles. Using high-resolution laser imaging, the scientists also saw details of nerves in the gastric system, small units in muscles called sarcomeres and, when the dye was applied to the mice’s scalp, even structures of the brain’s blood vessels. If the tartrazine wasn’t washed off, the effect lasted about 10 to 20 minutes before the skin returned to its original state.

Still image from video in which the abdominal organs are visible through the skin of a mouse after absorbing dye

A still image of a real-time video demonstrates the optical transparency in a mouse abdomen, enabling the visualization of the animal’s abdominal organs. The scale bar represents 5 mm. (The red hue is from the dye.)

“Achieving Optical Transparency in Live Animals with Absorbing Molecules,” by Zihao Ou et al., in Science , Vol. 385. Published online September 5, 2024

Past research that rendered skin transparent focused on introducing already transparent materials, including glycerol and fructose solution. Those molecules were also able to reduce light scattering but were “not as efficient [as tartrazine] because they are not ‘colored’ enough,” says Guosong Hong, a materials science engineer at Stanford University and senior author of the new paper. Other approaches that remove essential molecules in tissues rather than adding new ones accomplish similar effects but can only be done in nonliving animals or biopsied tissue. For example, Oregon Health & Science University dermatologist Rajan Kulkarni worked on an optical tissue clearing project in 2014 in which researchers completely dissolved the lipids from whole organs and animals and replaced them with clear hydrogel. “That was always a limitation, it required something to be ex vivo . We had to remove the tissues or remove the organ, or the organism itself was no longer living,” says Kulkarni, who was not involved in the new study. “This method [in the new paper] is interesting because it does allow the skin, or the epidermal layer, [in living animals] to be made transparent so that you can visualize what is underneath.”

While it is far from human trials, the concept may someday have helpful medical applications. Hong proposes it could potentially assist in the early detection of skin cancer and make laser-based tattoo removal more straightforward. It could also make veins more visible for drawing blood or administering fluids via a needle—especially in elderly patients with veins that would be difficult to locate—he says. In some cases, such a strategy may be a more compelling option than the use of imaging technologies such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and ultrasound. “I can definitely see this could be useful for mouse and other kinds of animal visualizing experiments because it would give you the ability to visualize at light microscopy resolution, whereas other methods of MRI, CT [computed tomography], ultrasound are not as finely resolved,” Kulkarni says. “In terms of a proof of concept, it’s really fantastic. Clinically, it remains to be seen.”

The researchers didn’t observe any adverse side effects in the mice after the dye was removed. Ou says that tartrazine and similar, more efficient molecules must be further tested for human safety, however. Tartrazine can cause allergic reactions . And although the coloring is FDA-approved, the agency has strict limitations on amounts used in products . In the study, the mice were able to tolerate the highest concentration used, 0.6 molar, during the short testing periods. But “human skin is about 10 times thicker than [that of] mice, which means that the time required for diffusion is probably much greater—a few minutes for mice is going to be hundreds of minutes for humans,” Ou says. “We hope that with our initial work, there will be more follow up proposing new molecules that are going to be more efficient and safer for human application.”

Life on alien planets probably wouldn’t experience day and night – here’s how that may change evolution

Postdoctoral Research Associate in Venus Global Climate Modelling, The Open University

Disclosure statement

Maureen Cohen receives funding from the Natural Environment Research Council and the Science and Technology Facilities Council.

The Open University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation UK.

View all partners

Do aliens sleep? You may take sleep for granted, but research suggests many planets that could evolve life don’t have a day and night cycle. It’s hard to imagine, but there are organisms living in Earth’s lightless habitats, deep underground or at the bottom of the sea, that give us an idea what alien life without a circadian rhythm may be like.

There are billions of potentially habitable planets in our galaxy. How do we arrive at this number? The Milky Way has between 100 billion and 400 billion stars.

Seventy percent of these are tiny, cool red dwarfs, also known as M-dwarfs . A detailed exoplanet survey published in 2013 estimated that 41% of M-dwarf stars have a planet orbiting in their “Goldilocks” zone, the distance at which the planet has the right temperature to support liquid water.

These planets only have the potential to host liquid water , though. We don’t yet know if any of them actually do have water, much less life. Still, that comes to 28.7 billion planets in the Goldilocks zones of M-dwarfs alone. This is not even considering other types of stars like our own yellow Sun.

Rocky planets orbiting in an M-dwarf’s habitable zone are called M-Earths. M-Earths differ from our Earth in fundamental ways. For one thing, because M-dwarf stars are much cooler than the Sun, they are close-in, which makes the gravitational pull of the star on the planet immensely strong.

The star’s gravity pulls harder on the near side of the planet than the far side, creating friction that resists and slows the planet’s spin over aeons until spin and orbit are synchronised. This means most M-Earths are probably tidally locked, which is when one hemisphere always faces the sun while the other always faces away.

A tidally locked planet’s year is the same length as its day. The Moon is tidally locked to the Earth, which is why we always see only one face of the Moon and never its dark side .

A tidally locked planet may seem exotic, but most potentially habitable planets are probably like this . Our closest planetary neighbour, Proxima Centauri b (located in the Alpha Centauri system four light-years away), is probably a tidally locked M-Earth.

Unlike our Earth, then, M-Earths have no days, no nights and no seasons. But life on Earth, from bacteria to humans, has circadian rhythms tuned to the day-night cycle.

Sleep is only the most obvious of these. The circadian cycle affects biochemistry, body temperature, cell regeneration, behaviour and much more. For example, people who receive vaccinations in the morning develop more antibodies than those who receive them in the afternoon because the immune system’s responsiveness varies throughout the day.

We don’t know for sure how important periods of inactivity and regeneration are to life. Maybe beings that evolved without cyclical time can just keep on chugging, never needing to rest.

To inform our speculation, we can look at organisms on Earth that thrive far from daylight , such as cave-dwellers, deep-sea life and microorganisms in dark environments like the Earth’s crust and the human body.

Many of these life-forms do have biorhythms, synchronised to stimuli other than light. Naked mole rats spend their entire lives underground, never seeing the sun, but they have circadian clocks attuned to daily and seasonal cycles of temperature and rainfall . Deep-sea mussels and hot vent shrimp synchronise with the ocean tides.

Bacteria living in the human gut synchronise with melatonin fluctuations in their host. Melatonin is a hormone your body produces in response to darkness.

Temperature variations caused by thermal vents, humidity fluctuations, and changes in environmental chemistry or currents can all trigger bio-oscillations in organisms. This hints that biorhythms have intrinsic benefits.

Recent research shows M-Earths could have cycles that replace days and seasons. To study questions like these, scientists have adapted climate models to simulate what the environment on an M-Earth would look like, including our neighbour Proxima Centauri b .

In these simulations, the contrast between dayside and nightside seems to generate rapid jets of wind and atmospheric waves like those that cause Earth’s jet stream to bend and meander. If the planet has water, the dayside probably forms thick clouds full of lightning .

Interactions between winds, atmospheric waves and clouds may shift the climate between different states, causing regular cycles in temperature, humidity and rainfall. The lengths of these cycles will vary by planet from tens to hundreds of Earth days, but they won’t be related to its rotation period. While the star remains fixed in the sky of these planets, the environment will be changing.

Perhaps life on M-Earths would evolve biorhythms synchronised to these cycles. If a circadian clock organises internal biochemical oscillations, it may have to.

Or perhaps evolution would find a weirder solution. We could imagine species that live on the planet’s dayside and migrate to the nightside to rest and regenerate. A circadian clock in space instead of in time.

This thought should remind us that, if life exists out there, it will upend assumptions we didn’t know we had. The only certainty is that it will surprise us.

Circadian rhythms

Service Centre Senior Consultant

Director of STEM

Community member - Training Delivery and Development Committee (Volunteer part-time)

Chief Executive Officer

Head of Evidence to Action

IMAGES

25th Anniversary Historical Highlight: Exploring Legacy of Report on
15 Shocking Medical Experiments Performed On Human Beings
Human Radiation Experiments
Footage unveiled of Japan's massacre of Korean sex slaves in WWII
The most disturbing human experiments in US history
6 najbardziej złych eksperymentów na ludziach popełnionych przez rząd

VIDEO

Human Experiments #scarynails #nailart #acrylicnails #creepytiktoks #nail #nailvideos #tiktok
NASA experiment replicates life on Mars
An experiment in experiments
Unit 731: Japan’s Nightmare Experiments
The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease
Every Human Experiments Explained in 13 Minutes

COMMENTS

Unethical human experimentation in the United States
Unethical human experimentation in the United States
Unit 731
Unit 731 (Japanese: 731部隊, Hepburn: Nana-san-ichi Butai), [note 1] short for Manchu Detachment 731 and also known as the Kamo Detachment [3]: 198 and the Ishii Unit, [5] was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that engaged in lethal human experimentation and biological weapons manufacturing during the Second Sino-Japanese War ...
The victims of unethical human experiments and coerced research under
The victims of unethical human experiments and coerced ...
Unethical human experimentation
Unethical human experimentation
Unethical experiments' painful contributions to today's medicine
Such experiments have been criticized as unethical but have advanced medicine and its ethical codes, such as the Nuremberg Code. When He made his claim of genetically altering humans, the response ...
11 Scariest Human Experiments Ever, Explained
Here are 11 of the scariest human experiments ever conducted. 1. The Milgram Experiment. The Milgram Experiment was led by psychologist Stanley Milgram in the 1960s at Yale University. He wanted to investigate how far individuals can go with complying with instructions from authority figures, even if they conflict with their own moral beliefs.
Human Experimentation: An Introduction to the Ethical Issues
The Ethical Landscape. Ethical issues in human research generally arise in relation to population groups that are vulnerable to abuse. For example, much of the ethically dubious research conducted in poor countries would not occur were the level of medical care not so limited. Similarly, the cruelty of the Tuskegee experiments clearly reflected ...
How pieces of live human brain are helping scientists map nerve cells
Scientists have other methods to mimic human brains: Brain organoids, small balls of neural tissue that are grown from stem cells ( SN: 3/3/18, p. 22 ), and animals raised in labs have been ...
Scientific Group Advises Scrapping 14-Day Rule For Studying Human ...
An influential scientific society has recommended scrapping a long-standing taboo on studying human embryos in lab dishes beyond 14 days and greenlighted a long list of other sensitive research.
Living brain tissue experiments raise new kinds of ethical questions
For instance, researchers at the Seattle-based Allen Institute for Brain Science conduct experiments on live brain tissue to get clues about how the cells in the human brain operate (SN: 8/7/19 ...
The ethics of experimenting with human brain tissue
The ethics of experimenting with human brain tissue
9 evil medical experiments
On Oct. 1, 2010, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius issued a joint statement apologizing for the experiments, according to The Guardian ...
Topic: Human Experimentation
Topic: Human Experimentation. Addressing Social Justice Through the Lens of Henrietta Lacks. Among the many disruptions of the pandemic, one particular disappointment was the cancellation of the in-person annual meeting of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH), scheduled for Baltimore and set to coincide with the Berman ...
Why Science Needs Human Experience
Some researchers (A. Frank, M. Gleiser, E. Thompson, 2024) appear to make a similar argument that science versus lived experience is a false dichotomy, with claims going further: without human ...
Humans Could Live up to 150 Years, New Research Suggests
This article was originally published with the title " Humans Could Live up to 150 Years, New Research Suggests " in SA Health & Medicine Vol. 3 No. 4 (August 2021) doi:10.1038 ...
Researchers make mouse skin transparent using a common food dye
The mouse's beating heart and active respiratory system indicated that transparency was successfully achieved in live animals. ... animal. If the same technique could be translated to humans, it ...
Treat Human Subjects with More Humanity
Prior to World War II, there were no international ethics codes concerning research with human subjects, and only one country, Prussia (now part of Germany), had any human experimentation laws. The first known use of an informed consent form in medical research was by U.S. Army physician Walter Reed (1851-1902).
When and Why Is Research without Consent Permissible?
The U.S. federal regulations known as the "Common Rule," which govern research with human subjects, lists several conditions for waiving consent. However, neither guidance documents on the ethics of clinical research nor the literature in bioethics contains a general justification of research without consent.
Nazi human experimentation
Nazi human experimentation was a series of medical experiments on prisoners by Nazi Germany in its concentration camps mainly between 1942 and 1945. There were 15,754 documented victims, of various nationalities and age groups, although the true number is believed to be more extensive. Many survived, with a quarter of documented victims being ...
30 Most Unethical Psychology Human Experiments
Human experimentation in psychology has a dark history. Here's a list of the 30 most famous unethical psychology experiments in human history. ... and pregnant women — were subjected to experiments which included the removal of organs from a live body, amputation for the study of blood loss, germ warfare attacks, and weapons testing. Some ...
Experiments
Experiments. Unit 731 and Unit 100 were the two biological warfare research centres set up in spite of the Geneva Protocol of 1925 banning biological and chemical warfare. Led by Lieutenant-General Ishii Shiro, 3,000 Japanese researchers working at Unit 731's headquarters in Harbin infected live human beings with diseases such as the plague ...
Experiments on Live Human Brain Tissue Yield Unexpected Findings
The teams also found notable and unexpected differences between their findings and similar experiments in pre-clinical models, which Dr. Tripathy believes is likely reflective of the massive expansion of the human neocortex over mammalian and primate evolution. "These results showcase the notable diversity of human cortical pyramidal neurons ...
Common food dye can make skin transparent in mice, study finds
Researchers made the skin on the skulls and bellies of live mice transparent by applying a mixture of water and a yellow food coloring called tartrazine. ... Human skin is about 10 times thicker ...
Researchers Create Solution That Makes Living Skin Transparent
In their experiments with mice, the researchers rubbed the water and dye solution onto the skin of the animals' skulls and abdomens. ... "Optical equipment, like the microscope, is not directly used to study live humans or animals because light can't go through living tissue. But now that we can make tissue transparent, it will allow us ...
Japan's World War Two Live Human Experiments Revealed
The Nazi are not the only culprits who performed live human experiments and experimented with biological warfare during World War Two. Lately more and more elderly Japanese veterans have been coming forward with stories and memories of Unit 731, the Japanese regiment responsible during the war for thousands of experiments conducted on Chinese civilians, as well as on Soviet and US prisoners of ...
How scientists grew a model human embryo without a sperm or egg
A human embryo grown in a lab without a sperm or egg could be a revolutionary new way to test medicines that may help prevent miscarriage and genetic diseases Maiya Focht 2023-09-11T14:55:21Z
Vivisection
Vivisection - Wikipedia ... Vivisection
Scientists Make Living Mice's Skin Transparent with Simple Food Dye
In mere minutes, smearing mice with a common food dye can make a desired portion of their skin almost as transparent as glass. In a study published today in Science, researchers spread a solution ...
Life on alien planets probably wouldn't experience day and night
To inform our speculation, we can look at organisms on Earth that thrive far from daylight, such as cave-dwellers, deep-sea life and microorganisms in dark environments like the Earth's crust ...
Scientists make tissue of living animals see-through
In a pioneering new study, researchers made the skin on the skulls and abdomens of live mice transparent by applying to the areas a mixture of water and a common yellow food coloring called ...

11 Scariest Human Experiments Ever, Explained

Here are 11 of the scariest human experiments ever conducted.

2. The Monster Study

3. The Stateville Penitentiary Malaria Study

4. Operation Midnight Climax

5. Operation ARTICHOKE

6. The Standford Prison Experiment

7. The sexual reassignment experiment

8. The Aversion Project

9. Unit 731

10. Mentally disabled children infected with hepatitis

11. Tuskegee Syphilis Study

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Most Popular

10 Genetic Quirks You Didn’t Know You Got From Your Parents

7 Coastal Cities That Could Sink by 2100

Nature’s Little Helpers: 6 Surprising Beneficial Pests

In Case of Radiation Emergency, CDC Advises You to Do This!

14 Easy Sustainable Practices Recommended by Scientists

Unlocking the Mystery of Leap Years

8 Solar Panel Benefits: Are They REALLY Worth It?

Eye Drop Recall: 27 Meds Thousands Took, Pulled From the Market

SCARY: Aliens Might Visit Us by 2029 – Scientists Say

5 Shocking Things That Happen During Coma: See How Your Body Reacts to It

7 Scientific Reasons Why Zombies Can’t Actually Exist

Military Robots in Combat: Is It Ethical? And What Are the 6 Terrifying Risks?

7 Surprising Things We’ve Recently Learned About the Brain

This Fungi Creates Zombies (and Other 8 Interesting Facts About Them)

Human Experimentation: An Introduction to the Ethical Issues

The Scandal Unfolds

Tuskegee Studies

Unnecessary Drugs Mean Unnecessary Experiments

Unnecessary Experimentation on Children

Use of Placebo in Clinical Research

Placebos, Ethics, and Poorer Nations

Control Groups and Nutrition

The Ethical Landscape

More on Ethical Science

Controversial New Guidelines Would Allow Experiments On More Mature Human Embryos

Shots - Health News

Scientists Create Early Embryos That Are Part Human, Part Monkey

Science News

Share this:

More Stories from Science News on Neuroscience

A hunger protein reverses anorexia symptoms in mice

‘Then I Am Myself the World’ ponders what it means to be conscious

Alzheimer’s blood tests are getting better, but still have a ways to go

Bird flu has been invading the brains of mammals. Here’s why

Breastfeeding should take a toll on bones. A brain hormone may protect them

‘Do I Know You?’ explores face blindness and the science of the mind

Pain may take different pathways in men and women

The ethics of experimenting with human brain tissue

Access options

Related Articles

Faculty Positions in School of Engineering, Westlake University

Postdoctoral Associate- Genetic Epidemiology

NOMIS Foundation ETH Postdoctoral Fellowship

13 PhD Positions at Heidelberg University

Postdoctoral Associate- Environmental Epidemiology

Quick links

9 evil medical experiments

Separating triplets

The Stanford Prison Experiment

Sign up for the Live Science daily newsletter now

Most Popular

Topic: Human Experimentation

Honoring an Immortal Contribution

Alan Regenberg, MBE

Joseph Ali, JD

Nancy E. Kass, ScD

Jeremy Sugarman, MD, MPH, MA

Why Science Needs Human Experience

Along with Stanford news and stories, show me:

Absorption reduces scattering of light

The potential future of ‘clear’ tissue

For more information

Treat Human Subjects with More Humanity

The Scope of Trust

Research Before Regulation

The Advent of Regulations