I am curious, though, as to what, specifically, “humanitarian science” or “therapeutic tyranny” are. I just want to be on the same page with you, here, because communication requires that we agree on the meanings of terms in the language. I find that people will make up multisyllabic terms for the purpose of wow-ing their communication partners and lend their statements either authority or mysticism. Giving you the benefit of the doubt — those terms are some sort of field-specific jargon that I’m not familiar with.

At any rate, Dirk, this seems to be some sort of veiled accusation. I bear in mind lots of things when I carry out my work. Medical research in the US driven by lots of various competing factors, but I believe that, for all the ugly sausage-making and politics that is the process (and I have very much criticized it here), in the end we fund good projects and good scientists, toward goals make the human condition less short, less brutish, and less painful.

‘I’m particularly attune to this topic because I just submitted a grant that was finally uploaded today (that involves human subjects). high five*’

Congrats! I hope you will bear in mind this quote….

‘ More than 200 hundred years ago Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) warned: “I believe that in the end humanitarianism will triumph, but I fear that, at the same time, the world will become a big hospital, each person acting as the other’s humane nurse.”
Moreover, Goethe foresaw the moral hollowness of the “humanitarian science” on which such therapeutic tyranny would rest: “I could never have known so well how paltry men are, and how little they care for really high aims, if I had not tested them by my scientific researches. Thus I saw that most men only care for science so far as they get a living by it, and that they worship even error when it affords them a subsistence.” ‘

@addisontree – In clinical research, despite the fact that we are doing studies in large numbers of people and in populations — and our data and conclusions are treated as aggregations or as application to large numbers of people (the “average” patient); we still treat individuals as wholly independent individuals. The benefits to society don’t matter and the care for the patient or study participant is considered above all else in deciding what to do.

Regarding the Belmont report, and the Declaration of Helsinki. I do research at a university, and we are quizzed on them (I bet Steve is too) annually, in an ethical research conduct certification process. If you care to read the legalese & protracted governmentspeak on it, the NIH spells it all out on their website. http://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/hs/ . I’m particularly attune to this topic because I just submitted a grant that was finally uploaded today (that involves human subjects). high five*

Think of it like a catch 22; you want to do a study to prove something isn’t harmful, but if you don’t already have enough evidence to show it is not harmful then it is not ethical to perform with humans (or even with animals most likely). If you do have enough evidence to show it is not harmful then your study is superfluous as there would not even be a possibility of learning something new (unless you are trying to show the consensus is wrong and that RF really is harmful, in which case you are back at square one).

You make a good point about the greater benefit to society that can come from subjecting a number of test subjects to possible harm, but when it comes to humans we set the bar extremely high. You could say that the rights of the individual are put before the benefits society may reap. This is a factor of our modern values; if we lived in a society like pre-modern Japan where the honour of of the empire was held far above that of any individual (think kamikazi, seppuku, ect) then you could probably justify many studies for the greater good.

But as it happens we don’t live in pre-modern Japan, and if we would like to continue valuing individual freedom above all else we have to make some concessions, like not conducting experiments with no expectation of benefit for the participant in order to see if something is harmful.

Since the health risk to RF exposure (via the headbands) is tiny and the health benefit of the additional exercise is substantial all participants should expect an overall improvement in health at the start of the study. The study itself is measuring the impact of low power RF on the introduction of a healthy exercise regiment. However since we don’t really expect RF effects to be depend on the amount of exercise a person does, this revised study would be a good proxy for the original “no benefit” experiment described previously.

The Belmont Report was a good read and helps a lot. The report itself seems to allow for research with minimal risk and no benefit to the subject (assuming participants are (1) well informed and comprehend both the risks and the lack of benefits and (2) conforms to the principle of Justice.

From the section “The Nature and Scope of Risks and Benefits”:

“Risks and benefits of research may affect the individual subjects, the families of the individual subjects, and society at large (or special groups of subjects in society). Previous codes and Federal regulations have required that risks to subjects be outweighed by the sum of both the anticipated benefit to the subject, if any, and the anticipated benefit to society in the form of knowledge to be gained from the research. In balancing these different elements, the risks and benefits affecting the immediate research subject will normally carry special weight. On the other hand, interests other than those of the subject may on some occasions be sufficient by themselves to justify the risks involved in the research, so long as the subjects’ rights have been protected. Beneficence thus requires that we protect against risk of harm to subjects and also that we be concerned about the loss of the substantial benefits that might be gained from research.”

That said I can understand why any particular IRB would tend to require that study participants (as a group) should expect to receive some benefit. (Note that understanding why IRBs would behave this way does not mean I agree that they should. I think they may be underestimating the costs – human costs and economic costs – that result from disallowing all human experiments with minuscule risks that provide no benefit to participants.)

Sorry about the confusion. My writing is sometimes not very clear.

I don’t think there is any ethical issue with doing a human experiments on the effects on low power RF. I’m told by the experts that any experiment in which the participants can experience only harm (even in tiny amounts) is unethical and I’m willing to accept this since I have reason to believe they know much much more about the subject than I do. (Although I won’t really feel comfortable until I better understand the rationale behind their assertion, hence my desire to learn more.)

I’m assuming there are two independent qualities for any give experiment: (1) Is the experiment ethical? (2) Is the experiment practical? A practical (or feasible) experiment would not be unduly expensive nor would it go beyond the limits of our current technologies.

Although the original “headband” example experiment may be deemed unethical I think it still serves as an example that low power RF experiments can be practical/feasible. The headbands in question might cost $10-$20 each and I bet one could find electronics manufacturers willing to donate the equipment. (After all it’s in their interest to support research like this even when the research is conducted independently.) The burden on the participants is minimal. Participant compliance can be explicitly monitored instead of having to rely on self-reporting. (For example, the headbands might measure temperature on the inside surface and record the result every thirty minutes. If temperature falls much below 98.6F then we know the participant took off their headband during the night.)

Why would we think such experiments would be impractical? It’s not like we need to set up a cell phone contract for each participant. We only need to simulate the RF transmissions associated with a cell phone. The participants would not even need to have “bars on their phone” where they sleep.

Am I missing something?