Historical aspect

[Guest guest]

During World War II, doctors in Nazi Germany were conducting horrifying research on prisoners in concentration camps. This research was done on involuntary participants who usually died as a result of the experiments. After the war, many of these doctors were tried at the Nuremberg trials for their crimes. The International community was shocked by the revelations of their research. As a result of the trial, the Nuremberg Code was created in 1948. This international document was one of the earliest to address ethics in medical research. It stated that voluntary consent was mandatory for any clinical research.

One of the major events that brought the issue of obtaining informed consent to the public was the revelation of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. The study was conducted by the United States Public Health Service. The Tuskegee study began in 1932 and continued till 1972, when it was revealed to the public. The purpose of the study was to examine the long term effects of syphilis. The participants of the study were 400 African American males, who were primarily poor sharecroppers. These men all had syphilis, but were unaware of it. They were also unaware of the true nature of the experiment. The most horrifying aspect of the experiment was in the 1950s when penicillin was proved to be effective at curing syphilis. The researchers

did not treat these men suffering from syphilis and even prevented other doctors who saw the participants from treating the syphilis. As many as one hundred men may have died from complications from their untreated syphilis. The study was revealed in 1972 by a researcher who had worked on the project. His newspaper article shocked the country and caused the project to be shut down.

Literature is loaded with numerous such instances which have further increased the importance of Informed consent in clinical research.

Dr. Smita