Читать книгу Evaluation in Today’s World - Veronica G. Thomas - Страница 57

Another example of unethical research practice includes the abuse of human participants during World War II and the early Cold War when U.S. officials studied the effects of radiation through experiments on hospital patients, pregnant women, children with intellectual disabilities, and enlisted military personnel. While officials authorized the wartime experiments to establish health and safety standards for the thousands of workers in atomic bomb plants, few of the participants in the experiments gave informed consent. In fact, most had no knowledge that they were being exposed to radioactive materials. After the war ended, officials justified expanding the study of the effects of radiation on grounds of national security. In the 1990s, following congressional investigations, numerous official reports, scholarly studies, and lawsuits, the government offered apologies and financial compensation to some of the victims of human radiation testing.