US MEDICAL RESEARCHERS, THE NUREMBERG DOCTORS TRIAL, AND THE NUREMBERG CODE - A REVIEW OF FINDINGS OF THE ADVISORY-COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RADIATION EXPERIMENTS

The Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE), establi shed to review allegations of abuses of human subjects in federally sp onsored radiation research, was charged with identifying appropriate s tandards to evaluate the ethics of cold war radiation experiments. One central question for ACHRE was to determine what role, if any, the Nu remberg Code played in the norms and practices of US medical researche rs. Based on the evidence from ACHRE's Ethics Oral History Project and extensive archival research, we conclude that the Code, at the time i t was promulgated, had little effect on mainstream medical researchers engaged in human subjects research. Although some clinical investigat ors raised questions about the conduct of research involving human bei ngs, the medical profession did not pursue this issue until the 1960s.