Human Experimentation and the Convergence of Medical Research and Patient Care

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Abstract
This essay discusses the growth of experimen tation on human subjects in the United States and Great Brit ain in the twentieth century and focuses on a linkage that developed in medicine between research and patient care. It examines circumstances that helped to forge this linkage: a notion that the uncertainty of outcome common to activi ties in medical research and practice basically joins the two; a concept of medical education that research training creates analytic skills essential in providing good patient care; gov ernment policies which fiscally link medical research to med ical education; and the view that patient care and research can be simultaneously and ethically pursued by a given doctor on a given patient.