Some cases have been remarkable for starting broad discussion and for setting precedent in medical ethics.
Research
Research case country location year summary Psychosurgery 1880sPsychosurgery (also called neurosurgery for mental disorder) has a long history. During the 1960s and 1970s, it became the subject of increasing public concern and debate, culminating in the US with congressional hearings. Particularly controversial was the work of Harvard neurosurgeon Vernon Mark and psychiatrist Frank Ervin, who wrote a book, Violence and the Brain, in 1970. The National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research in 1977 endorsed the continued limited use of psychosurgical procedures. Since then, a few facilities in some countries have continued to use psychosurgery on small numbers of patients. In the US and other Western countries, the number of operations has further declined over the past 30 years, a period during which there have been no major advances in ablative psychosurgery. Surgical removal of body parts to try to improve mental health United States New Jersey 1920s Controversial psychiatrist Henry Cotton at Trenton State Hospital in New Jersey became convinced that insanity was fundamentally a toxic disorder and he surgically removed body parts to try to improve mental health.The Monster Study United States Iowa 1939 The Monster Study is the name given to a stuttering experiment performed on orphan children in Davenport, Iowa in 1939. It was conducted by Wendell Johnson at the University of Iowa. The research began with the selection of 22 subjects from a veterans' orphanage in Iowa. None were told the intent of the research, and they believed that they were to receive speech therapy. The study was trying to induce stuttering in healthy children. The experiment became national news in the San Jose Mercury News in 2001, and a book was written. On 17 August 2007, six of the orphan children were awarded $925,000 by the State of Iowa for lifelong psychological and emotional scars caused by six months of torment during the Iowa University experiment. Although none of the children became stutterers, some became self-conscious and reluctant to speak.Huge payout in US stuttering case – BBC News A spokesman for the University of Iowa called the experiment "regrettable". Medical Experimentation on Black Americans United States Various Occurred over many decades There has been a long history of medical experimentation on African Americans. From the era of slavery, when atrocities were committed on black women by J. Marion Sims, to the present day, Black Americans have been unwitting subjects of medical experimentation. Author Harriet Washington argues that "diverse forms of racial discrimination have shaped both the relationship between white physicians and black patients and the attitude of the latter towards modern medicine in general."
In the 1960s, Ionia State Hospital, located in Ionia, Michigan, was one of America's largest and most notorious state psychiatric hospitals in the era before deinstitutionalization. Doctors at this hospital diagnosed African Americans with schizophrenia because of their civil rights ideas. See The Protest Psychosis. Plutonium injections United States 1945–1947 Eighteen people were injected with plutonium by Manhattan Project doctors; the most notorious of them, Albert Stevens, received more radiation than any other living person. None of the patients were told about the experiment, nor did the doctors ask for their consent. See Eileen Welsome's book The Plutonium Files.R.C. Longworth. Injected! Book review:The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War , The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Nov/Dec 1999, 55(6): 58–61. Doctors' Trial United States 1946 German medical doctors went on criminal trial for Nazi human experimentation. See The Years of Extermination.Guatemala syphilis experiments U.S./Guatemala1946–48The syphilis experiments in Guatemala were United States human experiments conducted in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948. The experiments were led by physician John Charles Cutler. They were done during the administration of American President Harry S. Truman and Guatemalan President Juan José Arévalo.