Guinea Pigs, Heroes & Desperate Patients: The History & Ethics of Human Research

The objective of this course is to increase participants’ awareness and understanding of ethical issues that arise in the conduct of research on human subjects. The course will explore the history and future of ethical and policy challenges using a multi-disciplinary approach. Leading scholars in the ethics of human subject research will serve as course faculty.  This course will introduce participants to the history that grounds policies and debates regarding the use of humans in research. It will continue with discussion of how current international and US policies governing research are applied, how ethical norms and concepts have evolved, and how, in some cases, changes in research have outpaced changes in policy, leading to an often complicated mismatch between the two.

The lead instructor is Jeffrey Kahn, who is the Robert Henry Levi and Ryda Hecht Levi Professor of Bioethics and Public Policy at the Johns Hopkins University Berman Institute of Bioethics.  He will be joined by colleagues who are all among the leading scholars in aspects of the ethical and policy issues related to research on human subjects, including Profs. Ruth Faden (history and theory of informed consent), Nancy Kass (public health research, research in international settings), Jeremy Sugarman (empirical approaches to research ethics, US research policy), Debra Mathews (US and international science and research policy), Gail Geller (participants' perspectives on research participation), Joseph Ali (law and research oversight in US and international settings), and Dan O'Connor (medical history, ethics and social media-based research).