Mindbend

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WASHINGTON, July 12, 1974-President Richard M. Nixon signed into law today the National Research Act (Pub. L. 93-348). The law calls for the creation of a National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects in Biomedical and Behavioral Research. There has been growing concern about the ethics of research involving children, retarded persons, prisoners, the terminally ill, and particularly fetuses.

It is hoped that by creating appropriate guidelines some of the shocking abuses that have been exposed of late can be obviated, such as the purposeful infecting of a large number of retarded children with hepatitis in order to study the natural progession of the disease, or the discovery a few months ago at a Boston hospital of a dozen dismembered aborted fetuses.

The first phase of implementing the law includes a moratorium on “research in the United States on a living human fetus, before or after induced abortion, unless such research is done for the purpose of assuring the survival of such fetus.” Obviously the fetal issue is intimately tied to the highly emotional abortion issue.

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