Talk:Experiment

Manhattan Project

The last section of the article currently says something along the lines of the Manhattan project not directly involving human exposure, but from the Trinity test onward it certainly did. Although there were scientists present at that test who more fully understood the danger and could be considered willing to endanger themselves for the sake of watching their bomb-peen in action, it's almost certain that the enlisted soldiers and others on site had very little real idea of the dangers of what they were watching outside of being impressed by the scale. Fallout from the tests in the form of vaporized plutonium from the 10 pounds of bomb core that didn't undergo fission settled slowly over inhabited areas downwind. After this test the minimum range to inhabited areas was increased to 150 miles, which was convenient since most inhabited areas were on the edge of this so the test site could just be adjusted slightly; it seemingly had little to do with human health. For reasons that make little sense (they weren't aware of the test (?!)) those affected by fallout from the Trinity test aren't eligible, but the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act has covered a very large number of others; As a result of fallout from later Nevada tests, as of early 2023 (see linked page) 25,663 had received compensation for having been affected by fallout, along with 5,388 onsite participants, 6,896 uranium miners, 1,921 uranium millers and 406 ore transporters, with nearly $2.6 trillion having been paid out. That it happened and wasn't ethical was basically acknowledged in the act itself:

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act was passed by Congress on October 5, 1990, and signed into law by President George H. W. Bush on October 15, 1990. In the successful bill it was written that Congress "apologizes on behalf of the nation" to individuals who were "involuntarily subjected to increased risk of injury and disease to serve the national security interests of the United States."

"Involuntarily subjected" says everything that needs to be said about intent.

Actually at the time that the first bombs were assembled, plutonium was believed to be far more toxic in the long term than it is and it was expected that all scientists on site and more or less anyone handling plutonium would have been dead of lung cancer by the 70s. They ended up having a fairly low rate of lung cancer. The fact that it was being tracked because of those expected results indicates it wasn't a simple unexpected discovery but intentional observation of a treatment group (those exposed) vs. general populations (control) which basically defines a human experiment.

I would say far better examples might be the TGN1412 first phase trials where 6 otherwise healthy people were affected by multiple organ failures or died after an unexpected reaction in humans (mice, rats, and chimps didn't show negative reactions), although with the history of monoclonal antibodies in humans and their potential usually horrifying side effects the ethical question could also be whether testing them on healthy people is ever justified. In that case they were the first test subjects, but a drug with the effects of that and most of the T-cell related monoclonal drugs is something a healthy person doesn't need or want; they're generally (in the US) approved to treat specific cancers, then later sold as psoriasis medications unethically (commercials showing a woman with a tiny red spot near her hairline instead of the 50% body coverage you should be at before considering a drug that can cause the blood-brain barrier to mess up somehow and allow infection of the brain itself by fungus, something that only happens otherwise in corpses and late-stage AIDS patients. The second doesn't occur as much anymore, either.

More recently BIA 10-2474 tests left one man brain-dead after rapid change into a state resembling stroke and severe permanent brain damage and necrosis in 4 others. In that case the drug had been tested in 90 others at lower doses first; the ethical issue arises where the high multiple dose group that suffered the debilitating permanent effects was being given the drugs even after the first person injected was in the hospital lapsing into a coma without factoring in that as being a possible effect of the drug despite several factors pointing towards the posibility. In that way it's very similar to the drug trial mentioned above, with test subjects being given doses even as those who had been injected before them were well on their way to death. This case with successful human trials before these poses the good ethical question of whether or not the supervisors were acting ethically and really believed their drug had nothing to do with the rapid onset of effects in the first person injected. My bias would be to say they were thinking more of the potential jackpot of money from this drug and the huge lineup of analogues I'm sure was already tested on rats and mice. You need medical ethics studies for that sort of thing though. A Shortfall Of Gravitas (talk) 12:10, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

References