great theologian is said to have affirmed that a man, perishing from
starvation, had the moral right to take a loaf of bread that did not
belong to him, if only thus he could preserve his life. Is Science
ever in such straits of necessity that in a single instance it is
obliged to take from any man his supreme right of inviolability, and
to make its experiments within the wards of the hospital, upon the
eyes of the dying, upon the bodies of the ignorant and the poor?

There is yet another method by which perhaps we may test the morality
of the practice. A great philosopher of another century seeking to
find some criterion of man's duty toward his fellow-men, based
obligation upon a universal law. "Act," said Kant, "as if the motive
of thy conduct were to become by thy will a universal law." Suppose we
apply this maxim of Kant to the use of human beings for research
purposes. An experimenter in a hospital makes dying children his
material. Is he willing that the maxim of his act should be
universal, and apply to experiments upon his own child, when it lies
at the point of death? He plunges needle-electrodes into the brain of
a simple-minded and perhaps friendless servant-girl. Can we imagine
him willing that the motive of his deed should govern and justify
experiments of the same kind made upon his mother or his wife?
Following Ringer, he tests the actions of poisons upon patients in
some hospital under his control. Would he be willing that the law be
universal, and that the action of such drugs should first be tested
upon himself? He suggests the use of healthy children as "controls" in
tests with the dead germs of a horrible disease. Is there anyone
connected with the Rockefeller Institute, for example, who would be
willing that such act should establish a universal precedent, and that
his own children should be taken, and without his knowledge, made the
"material" for such research?

Admitting that some experiments upon human being may be ethically
permissible, and that other phases of such investigations are morally
wrong, how are we to distinguish between them? May it not be possible
to indicate principles which would be generally accepted, according to
which the line may be drawn? Let us make the attempt.

I. Justifiable Experimentation upon Man

1. All experiments made by intelligent and conscientious physicians or
surgeons upon their patients for some definite purpose pertaining to
the personal benef