REPLY
Joseph Goldberger: Unsung Hero
Bradley K. Evans and
Alvan R. Feinstein
15 January 1995 | Volume 122 Issue 2 | Page 157
IN RESPONSE:
Physicians have always had dilemmas in reconciling our sometimes conflicting obligations to individual persons and society. A major role of informed consent, as used in the past and in many research projects today, is to allow individual persons to volunteer for activities that are aimed mainly at benefiting society [1]. Direct benefits for the volunteers can also come from the pardons given to prisoners many years ago for the pellagra experiments or from the money given to participants in experiments at contemporary clinical research centers [1].
Nevertheless, times and customs change, as well as views about ethics. We discussed Joseph Goldberger's scientific achievements during the era in which he lived and worked [2]. Evaluators of the past will always be able to find "ethical violations," and reviewers a century from now will doubtlessly note many corresponding flaws in what is being done today. We would like to thank those readers who enjoyed our paper and who were pleased to learn about Goldberger's work but who wrote to us rather than to the Editor.
1. Levine RJ. Ethics and Regulation of Clinical Research. 2d ed. Baltimore: Urban and Schwarzenberg; 1986.
2. Elmore JG, Feinstein AR. Joseph Goldberger: an unsung hero of American clinical epidemiology. Ann Intern Med. 1994; 121:372-5.
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