Human Experimentation and the Convergence of Medical Research and Patient Care

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.