Institutional review boards

Following World War II the public was confronted by the grim facts of human experimentation on prisoners of war and civilians. Almost without regard to human life, insensitive experiments were carried out in human research subjects to determine human endurance to different stress situations. Also, genetic experiments involving twins and malformed children were performed. The postwar investigations were shocking and led to the Declaration of Helsinki. The American public thought its culture was immune to this unethical human experimentation. Then, it was discovered that even in the United States, clinical experimentation had been going on for years in certain institutions studying the effects of untreated syphilis and certain mental disorders.