History of Ethics in Research

The ideas of “êthikê theôria” were likely originally discussed by Aristotle, who also studied and provided standards for evaluating human behavior. Formal rules were developed in response to a history of unethical human testing, including the Nuremberg Trials and the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Informed consent, beneficence, and justice were among the concepts created by these rules, which included the Nuremberg Code, the Declaration of Helsinki, and the Belmont Report, to safeguard study subjects. In order to assure ethical conduct in research, institutional review boards are now essential. The idea of using humans in studies was starting to gain traction by the turn of the 20th century, provided that large-scale investigations were initially carried out on animals. Humans and animals were employed in studies much more frequently as the understanding of bacteria advanced and pharmaceutical corporations grew.