L'expérimentation sur l'homme comme pratique et comme représentation

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Abstract
Experiments on Man as Practice and as Representation. Medical experiments on man are an inseparable part of «experimental medicine». They have created a legend which contrasts the cruelties of human vivisection, testing of poisons and inoculation, with the conduct of a few men of high morality, in the forefront of whom is Claude Bernard. While the cruelties referred to indeed belong to history and led to the practices denounced at Nuremberg, the constitution of an ethic legitimising experiments on human beings in certain conditions followed the successive stages of medicine and of the sciences on which it is based. «Tests» could not go beyond the pragmatic stage so long as medicine was based solely on clinical observation. Not until physiology, chemistry and then statistical methods entered the hospital did human experimentation appear in its modem guise. Each new development raised new ethical questions, further complicating a conflict over principles which has never been settled. The ethics committees which have addressed these questions remain sites of confrontation and compromise.

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