For the first time in twenty years the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS, 2009) is considering changes to federal regulations governing research. The Common Rule provides the basis for government regulations and Institutional Review Boards (IRB). Proposed changes will have a significant impact on Institutional Review Board…

During the course of the last century, a number of historical instances of unethical human research have occurred, and risen to the forefront of the social imagination. The atrocities of the European and Pacific Holocausts, the tragic 1932-1972 United States Public Health Service Syphilis Studies at Tuskegee, concomitant with the 1946-48 unethical…