APPENDIX VI THE REGULATION OF EXPERIMENTATION ON HUMAN BEINGS A Bill for the regulation of the practice of experimentation upon human beings in the District of Columbia and elsewhere has been drawn, and will shortly be introduced in the Senate of the United States. An outline of the proposed Bill is here given, but in some respects it may be enlarged or modified before its final introduction. It is believed that a law may be framed which shall prohibit only those acts which are contrary to justice, and which should be forbidden by common consent. --------------------------- A Bill for the Regulation of Scientific Experimentation upon Human Beings in the District of Columbia and in the Territories and Dependencies of the United States. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled: SECTION 1. That hereafter no person shall make upon any human being any scientific, medical or surgical experiment or operation, EXCEPT FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE PERSON EXPERIMENTED UPON, unless the intelligent, personal consent of such latter person shall previously have been obtained. Every such consent, to be valid, must be in writing and must be preceded by a full and correct written statement setting forth to the person whose consent is sought whatever painful, injurious or dangerous consequences are obviously liable to result from the proposed experimentation, and such statement shall be signed both by the experimenter and the person to be experimented upon. SECTION 2. That experiments or operation of this nature shall be undertaken only by one of the responsible head-physicians or surgeons of some hospital or public instiution or by his special written authorization; provided only that nothing herein contained shall apply to scientific investigations incapable of causing injury, made by direction of authorities in charge of any institution of learning, upon students, with their consent, for the purpose of testing acuteness of mental action, or for the purpose of investigating other mental or physical phenomena. SECTION 3. That no scientific, medical or surgical experiment of any kind, liable to cause pain or distress or injury to health or danger to life, shall be permissible under any circumstances upon any new-born babe, or upon any infirm or aged or feeble-minded person, or upon anyone whose mental faculties are impaired, either temporarily or permanently, or upon any woman during pregnancy or within a year after her confinement, or upon any child under fifteen years of age, unless it be undertaken for the sole benefit of the person to be experimented upon; and the consent of any such person to any such experiment or operation shall not constitute such legal consent as is required by this act, but shall be null and void.