TOW #9- "Medical Research: The Dangers to the Human Subjects" by Marcia Angell

Dr. Herta Oberheuser being sentenced to twenty years in prison at the Nazi Doctors’ Trial, Nuremberg, August 1947

Click here for article

Marcia Angell makes it very clear throughout her entire essay, "Medical Research: The Dangers to the Human Subjects," that she is completely against using humans for scientific research.  She does this to both educate her audience on human experimentation and to get them to start considering the topic themselves as an issue that still needs fixing.  By using examples of the acts of Nazi Germany, Angell shows the audience that even scientific research in recent years uses the same excuses as people like Dr. Herta Oberhauser (pictured on the left) to justify their use of humans in extremely unjust experimentation.

The fact that the NIH and the CDC were using subjects in sub-Saharan Africa to justify giving a placebo to a group of pregnant mother with HIV instead of the medicine that would reduce the risk of passing on the infection to their offspring completely goes against the rights any human should have while being a part of scientific research.  They said that since the subjects in the control group would not regularly have access to such medicine, because of where they lived, that they were not harming them by giving them a placebo instead.  Angell points out that  Nazi Germany also used a very similar excuse, saying that "their human subjects were condemned to death anyway" (Para. 15).

This comparison to Nazi Germany can both stun and bring realization to the audience.  As I read this comparison, I was shocked that such organizations as the NIH and CDC, that are still in place today, could do such a thing as radical utilitarians did in the early 1900s.  Since human experimentation is not often a topic of conversation in my life, I had no idea that there were barely any laws regulating human experimentation until recently.  Since Angell is writing this essay after this issue is fixed, it is clear that she wants to educate her audience on the topic and make sure that it does not happen again.  By comparing not-so distant events with Nazi Germany, she shows just how important this issue is, meanwhile emphasizing the importance of laws that can prevent it.