Abstract

AIDS:

The National Research Act was passed as a result of the Tuskegee Study, a research study investigating syphilis in black males who received no treatment despite the discovery of penicillin. The Act requires the publication of regulations for the protection of human subjects, as well as requirements for informed consent and review of research by institutional research boards. The 1975 Declaration of Helsinki was also revised. President Clinton, spurned on by reports of humans unknowingly being injected with plutonium for research purposes, created the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. The Committee's report culminated in the creation of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission to act as a national deliberative body to advise on the ethical issues faced by the research community today. Despite codes, regulations, and policies, the ultimate protection of research subjects and the future of the research enterprise itself rests with individual investigators and their sense of ethical behavior in fulfilling their obligations to their research subjects.