Researchers as guinea pigs

Van Der Weyden, Martin B

doi:10.5694/j.1326-5377.2003.tb05061.x

Topics

Ethics and law

History and humanities

Statistics, epidemiology and research design

Self-experimentation in Australia is alive and well

Many advances in modern medicine owe a great deal to human experimentation. Indeed, much of biomedical research is irrelevant to mainstream medicine unless its clinical utility is established through human experimentation, for, as observed by the English essayist Alexander Pope, "the proper study of mankind is man."1

The Medical Journal of Australia, Strawberry Hills, NSW.

Correspondence:

1. Pope A. In: Parlington A, editor. The Oxford dictionary of quotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992: 552.
2. Altman LK. Who goes first? The story of self-experimentation in medicine. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998: 299, 6-8, 313, 38-52, 273-282, 283-296, 288-316, 193.
3. Porter R. The greatest benefit to mankind. A medical history of humanity from antiquity to the present. London: Harper Collins, 1997: 280-281.
4. Burnet M. Changing patterns: an atypical autobiography. Melbourne: William Heinemann, 1982: 110-112.
5. Castaldi PA, Firkin BG. Studies of the life span and fate of platelets. Aust Ann Med 1963; 12: 333-341.
6. Van Der Weyden M, Rother M, Firkin B. Megaloblastic maturation masked by iron deficiency: a biochemical basis. Br J Haematol 1972; 22: 299-301.
7. Koutts J, Van Der Weyden MB, Firkin BG. Effect of trimethoprim on folate metabolism in human bone marrow. Aust N Z J Med 1973; 3: 245-250.
8. Marshall BJ, Armstrong JAY, McGechie DB, Clancy RJ. Attempt to fufil Koch's postulates for pyloric campylobacter. Med J Aust 1985; 142: 436-439.
9. Landmann JK, Prociv P. Experimental human infection with the dog hookworm, Ancylostoma caninum. Med J Aust 2003; 178: 69-71.
10. Jasienski M. Wishful thinking and the fallacy of single subject experimentation. The Scientist 1996; 10: 10.

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