For the Good of Mankind?

Book excerpt: Experiment: A child is deliberately infected with the deadly smallpox disease without his parents' informed consent. Result: The world's first vaccine. Experiment: A slave woman is forced to undergo more than thirty operations without anesthesia. Result: The beginnings of modern gynecology. Incidents like these paved the way for crucial, lifesaving medical discoveries. But they also harmed and humiliated their test subjects. How do doctors balance the need to test new medicines and procedures with their ethical duty to protect the rights of humans? Take a journey through some of history's greatest medical advances—and its most horrifying medical atrocities—to discover how human suffering has gone hand in hand with medical advancement.