500 BC -- Hipprocates - Hippocratic Oath -- physians must promise to practice
- to practice ethical medicine. See Wiki Page.
40-90 AD -- Dioscorides,a Greek physician and surgeon, wrote De materia medica,
the most important pharmocological work for sixteen centuries. See Greek Dioscorides
129-217 AD --Galen, a Roman physician, philosopher and medical researcher, wrote That the Best Physician is also a Philosopher, proposing
the importance of combining medicine and philosophy. Galen also experimented on living animals to study physiology and anatomy. See Wiki
Maehle, Andreas-Holger. "The Ethics of Experimenting on Animal Subjects." The Cambridge World History of
Medical Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009. 552-57.
800 AD -- Ishaq bin Ali Rahawi , a Muslim physician, wrote the Adab al-Tabib (Conduct of a Physician), the first
treatise dedicated to medical ethics. See Wiki
1400s - 1600s -- Renaissance -- Recover of ancient Greek medical texts begins process of re-evaluation
of ethics of medicine
1500s -- Paracelsus , a physician during the Renaissance, re-envisions medicine See Wiki
1610 Galileo first proposes his support of the heliocentric worldview. He later recants his proposal
due to pressure by the Roman Catholic Church.
1700s - 1840s "Medical treatment (in England), and the medical response to illness, centered on the
individual patient, and did not extend from the individual to the implications for society at large." See Wiki
(Anne Hardy, 1993).
1753 -- James Lind , a Scottish surgeon for the Royal Navy, writes A Treatise on the Scurvy See Wiki
1779 -- Johann Peter Frank , a German physician, writes strict ethical guidelines for public
health and sanitation to improve the quality of life. See wiki
1794 -- Sir Thomas Percival an English physician, writes first modern code of medical ethics See Wiki
1822 -- Louis Pasteur born Dec. 27 in Dole, France. (d. September 28, 1895) -- Pasteur is perhaps the best known
"Two contrary laws seem to be wrestling with each other nowadays; the one, a law of blood and death, ever imagining new means
of destruction and forcing nations to be constantly ready for the battlefield -- The other a law of peace, work and health, ever
evolving new means of delivering man from the scourges which beset him. The one seeks violent conquests, the other the relief of
humanity. The latter places one human life above any victory, while the former would sacrifice hundreds and thousands of lives to
the ambition of one. The law of which we are the instrument seeks, even in the midst of carnage, to cure the sanguinary ills of the
law of war; the treatment inspired by our antiseptic methods may preserve thousands of soldiers. Which of these two laws will ultimately
prevail, God alone knows. But we may assert that French science will have tried, by obeying the law of Humanity, to extend the frontiers of life."
scientist of the 19th century. His germ theory of disease is the foundation of modern medicine and public health.
Pasteur said:
1830 -- Charles Babbage writes the book Reflections on the Decline of Science in England. This was one of books to catalog
scientific misdeeds. Originated such terms as data trimming, data fudging, data falsification, and data cooking.
Barber, Nigel. Ethics in Science and Technology. New York: Facts on File, 2002.
1847 -- American Medical Association adopts first code of ethics See Wiki
1848 -- (13 October 1821 - 05 September 1902) German physician Rudolf (Carl) Virchow, later famed for cell theory, founds the
"Medicine is a social science and politics [is] nothing but medicine on a grand scale... Doctors are the natural advocates of the poor,
and social problems are largely within their jurisdiction."
medical journal Medical Reform (Medicinische Reform), and writes "Report on the Typhus Epidemic in Upper Silesia." Preserving health and
preventing disease requires "full and unlimited democracy" and radical measures rather than "mere palliatives" This investigation of the
troubles of mill workers of Silesia condemned unsanitary conditions there in the Prussian Reichstag, much to the discomfort of Bismark and
other Prussian industrialists.
- Virchow famously says:
1854 -- John Snow, , doctor who broke the Boad Street pump and took direct action against the spread of cholera through polluted drinking water.
1856 -- Gregor Mendel, commonly known as "the father of genetics', began his studies on the reproduction on pea plants.
1900 -- Alice Hamilton, MD, begins studies of "occupational disease" among workers poisoned in the lead trades.
In 1919 Hamilton will become the first woman on the Harvard University faculty; she uses her position to promote international
public health organizations and to fight for workers rights in the "radium girls" case and in the leaded gasoline controversy.
1927 -- The term "bioethics" is first coined by Fritz Jahr. See Wiki
1932-1972- The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments were conducted by the US Public Health Service. Unethical treatment was given
to the participants as information and possible treatments were denied. See Wiki
1939 -- The United States begin the Manhattan Project to develop an atomic bomb. This was done after rumors that Nazi Germany was
trying to purify uranium to create there own fisson bomb. This event is thought to have launch the age of nuclear weapons.
1944 -- Josef Mengele performs gruesome human experiments in the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz. See Wiki
1947 -- Aldo Leopold , and American ecologist, publishes The Land Ethic - "dealing with man's relation to land and to the animals
and plants which grow upon it"
1947 -- Judges of the Numbering Trials create the Nuremberg Code. They used it as a set of research principles to be used to
prosecute the Nazi scientists as war criminals.
1948 -- Declaration of Geneva -- World Medical Association modern re-statement of the Hippocratic Oath, noting in part the duty
of physicians to serve the humanitarian goals of medicine. One part declares: "I will retain the utmost respect for life, even under threat.." See Wiki
1947 - 1991 -- The United States is involved the the testing of radiation on unsuspecting human subjects. This led to the
Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments to be formed in 1994.
1955 -- Jonas Salk discovers a cure for polio, which was a leading
cause of death at this time. Instead of patenting the vaccine, Salk gives it away for free to ayone who needs it. When ask who owned the
patent, he stated, "There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?"
1959 -- Henry Knowles Beecher (1904 --- 1976), an American scientists, writes "Experimentation in Man" for JAMA, detailed
ethical codes in medical research to date and advocated informed consent and the use of placebos in control subjects for clinical trials.
"A great deal can be done... by disseminating information on past experience and thinking." See Wiki
(Vincent Koop, HKB and the development of informed consent in anesthesia research, Anesthesiology: June 1999 - Volume 90 - Issue 6 - pp 1756-1765)
1960s -- Joseph Fletcher (1905 - 1991) , American professor founds theory of situational ethics in the 1960s, pioneer in the field of bioethics.
Fletcher was a leading academic exploring the topics of abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, eugenics, and cloning. See Wiki
1961--The Milgram Experiment was conducted to test how far a subject would go to earn approval of an authority figure. The
experiment was thought to violate many ethical standards due to extenuating emotional conflict and stress. See Wiki
1964 -- Declaration of Helsinki -- World Medical Association agrees on a code of research ethics; most journal editors required
that research be performed in accordance with the Declaration. The declaration led to the Institutional Review Board (IRB) process.
1970-- Van Rensselaer Potter, an American biochemist, suggests broader meaning for bioethics, including biosphere, a "global ethics,"
a discipline representing a link between biology, ecology, medicine and human values.
1971 -- Stanford Prison Experiment -- college students acted as prison guards or prisoners in a mock prison setting. The rash
behavior of the guards raised ethical questions and caused the experiment to end after only 6 days See Wiki See Video
1970s --The growing influence of ethics in contemporary medicine can be seen in the increasing use of Institutional Review Boards
to evaluate experiments on human subjects, the establishment of hospital ethics committees, the expansion of the role of clinician ethicists, and
the integration of ethics into many medical school curricula.
1975-- The Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, organized by Paul Berg, proposes ethical guidelines for biotechnology uses and safety. See Wiki
1978--The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) is formed. It consists of a group of medical journal editors who
create and each year revise Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts. See Wiki
1979--The Belmont Report was drafted by the Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare in response to the Tuskegee Experiments. It
reports the ethical guidelines to be used when human subjects are involved in research. See Wiki
1980s -- Universities establish human subjects review committees.
1980s - 1990s -- Variety of bioethics journals established. See Wiki
1982 -- William Broad and Nicholas Wade publish Betrayers of the Truth: Fraud and Deceit in the Halls of Science.
This book helps to to reveal much of the scientific misconduct that was going on at the time.
1992 -- The Office of Research Integrity is formed.
1996 -- Turnitin.com was created. Large undergraduate classes at UC Berkely inspired the creation of the website, which aims
to prevent duplicate research papers being handed in. See Wiki
1997--COPE, [The Committee On Publication Ethics] was established in the UK. Its members consist of academic journal editors
and others who are concerned about the integrity of what is peer-reviewed and published in journals. Publication on Ethics
2000s -- Unified approach to medical ethics -- See Peh-Med
2004-- eTBLAST was established. eTBLAST is a search engine designed to search similar texts within the MEDLINE
database. It has led to research involving plagiarism and duplicate publications of articles in academic journals. Pairs of similar
2005 -- United Nations Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights See Journal See Wiki
2008 -- Study on possible plagiarism and duplications using eTBLAST and Deja Vu publishes results:
Mounir Errami , Justin M. Hicks , Wayne Fisher , David Trusty , Jonathan D. Wren , Tara C. Long and Harold R. Garner,
DejaVu - A study of duplicate citations in Medline , Bioinformatics 2008, 24(2):243-249.