“The Only Feasible Means”: The Pentagon's Ambivalent Relationship with the Nuremberg Code

Convinced that armed conflict with the Soviet Union was all but inevitable, that such conflict would involve unconventional atomic, biological, and chemical warfare, and that research with human subjects was essential to respond to the threat, in the early 1950s the U.S. Department of Defense promul...

Full description

Saved in:  
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Moreno, Jonathan D. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Interlibrary Loan:Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany)
Published: 1996
In: The Hastings Center report
Year: 1996, Volume: 26, Issue: 5, Pages: 11-19
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Description
Summary:Convinced that armed conflict with the Soviet Union was all but inevitable, that such conflict would involve unconventional atomic, biological, and chemical warfare, and that research with human subjects was essential to respond to the threat, in the early 1950s the U.S. Department of Defense promulgated a policy governing human experimentation based on the Nuremberg Code. Yet the policymaking process focused on the abstract issue of whether human experiments should go forward at all, ignoring the reality of humans subjects research already under way and leaving unanswered ethical questions about how to conduct such research. Documents newly released to the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments tell the story of the Pentagon policy.
ISSN:1552-146X
Contains:Enthalten in: Hastings Center, The Hastings Center report
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.2307/3528464