Human Subjects in Medical Research

A Growing Debate.

Humans had served as experimental subjects in medical research long before 1900. In 1799 and 1800 more than forty volunteers participated in extensive trials on the effects of inhaling nitrous oxide gas. In 1803 Englishman Thomas Percival wrote a classic text on medical ethics in which he discussed experimentation on patients. Contributing to the increase in this type of research was the acceptance in the United States, beginning in the 1880s, of the germ theory of disease causation, which required more research with both animals and humans. Basic research of all kinds was also beginning in American medical schools. In the closing decades of the nineteenth century many examples of research on hospital patients in the United States and Europe were publicized, and opposition to such work developed among both medical professionals and laymen. Many antivivisectionists who were critical of experimentation on animals...

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