6 Dr. Sergei Bruick-honenko carried out an experiment where he removed the head of a dog and attached it to an apparatus called an “autojector” that kept it alive for six months. Years later he succeeded in resurrecting the same animal.

In post-revolutionary Russia, experiments with reviving dead living beings were carried out. It is believed that the young researcher got his idea from a “scientific-fantastic story” that talks about a severed human head living in a laboratory. He demonstrated an invention called an “autojector” to the Congress of Russian Pathologists that was made to keep severed heads alive in the lab.

A dog’s head was kept alive for 1 hour and 40 minutes, which allowed the doctor to observe the reflexes exhibited. Six months later, he successfully brought the dog back to life using the new apparatus, and it stayed alive for 24 hours.

His experiments were accepted and believed to fight against death. The Soviets used talented researchers in the work for artificial hearts and to enable resurrection. (1, 2)

7 William C. Black in 1940 infected a 12-month-old baby with herpes to help him study the disease. Even though his research was rejected on moral grounds, the work was published. 

Black infected more than 23 children with infected tissues of a single herpes virus to study the patients and demonstrate symptoms in 1930. He received severe backlash for his herpes experiments on the baby.

Many came up against him and accused him of abuse of power even though Black confirmed that the baby was “offered as a volunteer.” Nevertheless, his works were published and he went on continuing experimenting with viruses by infecting kids. (Source)

8 Operation Sea-Spray was a secret biological warfare experiment carried out in San Francisco in 1950 where the Serratia marcescens and Bacillus globigii bacteria were sprayed over a two-mile-long stretch of the coast. Eleven people fell sick and one died. Instances of the military performing testing in public, open-air locations were quite common those days. 

The Navy released pathogens off the San Franciscan shore. The released pathogens were enough for all of the 800,000 residents to inhale around 5,000 of the particles. The release happened on September 27, 1950, and by October 11, eleven residents checked into the Stanford Hospital for a very rare case of urinary infection. One of them died three weeks later. 

Cases of pneumonia increased exponentially in San Francisco after this incident. The army did not alert any residents or authorities before they blanketed the whole region with the bacteria. Around the same time, there were many serious heart valve infections reported along with serious infections in drug users in that period.

UK and US military scientists carried out the spraying of phenol and an anthrax stimulant across Dorset as a part of DICE trials from 1971 to 1975. Lawsuits were filed against the researchers years later by the victims’ grandchildren. (1, 2)

9 Mentally retarded children in Willbrook State School of Staten Island were intentionally infected with viral hepatitis as a medical experiment to track the viral infection in 1956, and the study lasted for 14 years. They justified the deliberate infection saying many in the facility had it, and it was inevitable that the other children would contract it eventually. 

Willbrook experiments were an attempt to determine the gamma globulin injection effectiveness on the hepatitis-infected test subjects. The moral nature of the experiment was widely discussed as the test subjects were mentally retarded children. The vulnerability of the children, informed consent, and the non-therapeutic nature of the experiment were some of the issues that came up.

The researchers who ran the experiments where they deliberately infected the patients claimed that the institution had such a very high rate of infection that it was practically impossible to think that these children would not have been exposed to the same strains of hepatitis.

They also raised the argument that the subjects were at lower risk as they were already in a contained, special unit where they will not be exposed to other diseases. Even though the authorities claimed that they had acquired parents’ consent, parents later admitted that the children were taken into the institution only through the hepatitis unit. (1, 2)

10 Father of American Gynecology, James Marion Sims, carried out a series of painful experiments on Black slave women from 1845 to 1849 without using anesthesia. One of the enslaved African American women named Anarcha had to undergo the same type of operation 30 times before Sims could cure her vesicovaginal fistula. 

Sims’ work was heavily criticized for unwarranted surgical experiments on unwilling as well as helpless Black women. Sims had to face strident criticism for not using anesthesia on his patients and was labeled a racist.

African American women were considered a “vulnerable population” during the 19th century. He is acknowledged as the father of modern surgical gynecology.

There is evidence that the participants were willingly taking part in the experiment as there were no other treatments for fistula victims at the time. Even though the surgery was not successful in many during the initial attempts, the participants kept coming back as they got some relief from the pain after the surgery.

There are also claims that there are no chances that these victims willingly participated as slaves were unaware of consent at the time. (1, 2)