Editors’ Introduction

On June 16, 1966, the New England Journal of Medicine published “Ethics and Clinical Research” by Henry K. Beecher. Beecher’s account of 22 examples of unethical contemporary clinical research shook up the medical profession and helped pave the way for U.S. federal regulation of research involving human subjects. Five decades later, in this issue of Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, we pay tribute to the lasting significance of this whistle-blowing article and to the remarkable contributions of Henry Beecher (1904–1976). Beecher was a pioneer in anesthesiology as an academic discipline and in research on pain and the placebo effect. He was an early and influential champion of randomized placebo-controlled trials, including the use of sham surgery interventions, and played a leading role in instituting the determination of death according to neurological criteria, thus fostering life-saving organ transplantation.

This issue of Perspectives includes nine original essays by distinguished scholars, which trace the biographical and historical contexts of Beecher’s contributions to the practice and ethics of clinical research and discuss their enduring legacy. In addition, this issue contains the text of the 2015 Henry Knowles Beecher award lecture by Renée Fox. We are grateful to Dr. Fox and the Hastings Center for the opportunity to publish this lecture.