REVISING THE HISTORY OF COLD-WAR RESEARCH ETHICS

President Clinton's charge to the Advisory Committee on Human Radiatio n Experiments included the identification of ethical and legal standar ds for evaluating government-sponsored radiation experiments conducted during the Cold War. In this paper, we review the traditional account of the history of American research ethics, and then highlight and ex plain the significance of a number of the Committee's historical findi ngs as they relate to this account. These findings include both the na tional defense establishment's struggles with legal and insurance issu es concerning human experiments, and the medical profession's perspect ive on human experimentation in the years following the Nuremberg Medi cal Trials. We conclude that the Committee's work both enriches the tr aditional view of the history of research ethics and opens important n ew areas for study.