Undue Risk: Secret State Experiments on Humans

  • Jonathan D. Moreno
W. H. Freeman: 2000. 320 pp. $24.95, £14.95

This revealing account of government- sponsored experiments on human subjects benefits from Jonathan Moreno's experience as a senior member of President Bill Clinton's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. Although Moreno makes no attempt to document such experiments comprehensively, the many examples he describes comprise a historically significant and illuminating series. They include research by Walter Reed and the Yellow Fever Commission on human volunteers at the beginning of last century, the Tuskegee syphilis study, experiments to find ways of protecting soldiers against mustard gas in the Second World War, and against chemical and biological weapons in the Gulf War, and other experiments to determine the effects of penicillin, nitrogen mustard, antimalarials, mescaline, plutonium and whole-body ionizing radiation.

The subjects in such research were patients, retarded children, volunteers, servicemen and prisoners, many of them recruited without informed consent, some unwittingly. For example, Moreno discusses the US government's failure to inform uranium miners, servicemen and members of the public about the risks of exposure to radiation when the United States was developing and testing atomic weapons. He also cites how NASA recruited Nazi experts to its space programme despite knowing about the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis, and their horrific experiments on concentration-camp prisoners. Other egregious research discussed includes that conducted by Shiro Ishii on Chinese and Russian victims in Manchuria and by the Iraqi government on Kurds and other populations in Iraq.

In recounting details of these state- sponsored experiments, Moreno gives penetrating insights into the circumstances surrounding them. He also highlights the personalities involved, the issues that were at stake, and the personal, professional and public attitudes of the time. In the process, he chronicles the need for, and gradual evolution and acceptance of, an ethical framework for research on humans. Such a framework should embody the principles of voluntary participation and informed consent, as exemplified in the Nuremberg Code.

Moreno says at the end of the book that he believes experiments on humans will continue to be necessary, not only for the pre-market testing of new pharmaceuticals and other products, but also to protect populations from the threat of attack by atomic, chemical and biological weapons. He recommends that, in order to ensure that such experiments meet ethical standards of openness and informed consent, the international community should set up a “research ethics court”.

In going behind the scenes to describe the struggles with the ethics of human experimentation among government officials concerned with national security, Moreno shows vividly how a policy of secrecy that seemed justifiable to those directly involved proved ultimately to be corrosive to democracy and to seriously violate human rights. Looking at the lessons to be learnt from this, he argues persuasively that although research on humans for military and medical purposes will probably continue indefinitely, this should be only for defensive rather than offensive purposes, should meet ethical standards of informed consent, and should expose none of its participants to undue risks. Moreno's call for an ethical review process to ensure that investigators consistently meet such standards merits the serious attention of citizens and governments everywhere.

Undue Risk deals in a balanced, scholarly way with the issues involved, documenting the sources of information with appropriate references. Although the book was written for a general readership, it has a timely and important message, and should be relevant to all those concerned with military preparedness, defence and the ethics of human experimentation.