Human experimentation

Unethical human experimentation describes the practice of using human subjects for research, usually intended for medical or social scientific purposes, without due regard for their well-being. This kind of abuse can include a number of actions and impacts such as deliberately distorting or withholding information about the aim and form of the experiment(s), pressurising individuals into participation and inflicting injury as a result of the research, sometimes even causing death. While the range of acts and their consequences linked to unethical behaviour are broad and diverse, the profile of victims tends to be narrowly predictable: those marginalised by race, ethnicity, gender, disability, socio-economic class and so on. It is the exploitation of the vulnerable by the powerful triumvirate of the state, medical science and the pharmaceutical industry that draws unethical human experimentation into the field of critical criminology.