During World War II, Nazi Germany conducted human experiments on concentration camp prisoners — including exposure to extreme cold and high-pressure environments — all without their consent, in an effort to understand the limits of the human body.
Beginning in 1932, the Tuskegee Study was conducted on African American men in Tuskegee, Alabama, to track the natural progression of untreated syphilis. Despite the discovery of an effective treatment in 1943, the men were deliberately left untreated to continue studying the “natural course” of the disease. The unethical study was only halted in 1972.
The former were prosecuted during the Nuremberg trials, leading to the creation of the Nuremberg Code in 1947, which outlined a set of ethical principles for human experimentation. The latter led the US to pass the National Research Act, which established a system to assess and monitor research involving human subjects.
Who could have expected that, in 21st-century Taiwan, there are still research projects where principal investigators — educators at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) — conducted long-term human experiments, not only without the consent of the subjects, but also by abusing their authority and using coercion. Even worse, the system left these students with no means of seeking help.
It has been eight months since legislators raised inquiries surrounding complaints by former members of a female soccer team at NTNU that soccer coach Chou Tai-ying (周台英) coerced them to participate in a blood sampling research project. They had to give blood samples three times per day for 14 days at a time for years, and she threatened to fail them if they did not comply.
Although the Ministry of Education has fined the university, Chou and project head Chen Chung-ching (陳忠慶) for contravening the Human Subjects Research Act (人體研究法), prosecutors say another two months are required to investigate coercion and other violations. However, the issue could be clarified simply by reviewing the original research proposal, ethics committee review documents, midterm and final reports, and audit documents, should any exist.
In a proper research project involving human subjects, research proposals are reviewed and approved by a research and ethics committee before they can proceed. In addition, the committee review is required to assess whether the benefits of the research outweigh potential harm and whether the research subjects are adequately protected.
Among these considerations, the informed consent of participants — given freely and voluntarily — is of paramount importance. Given the inherent power imbalance between lecturers and students, researchers should refrain from recruiting their own students as test subjects. Committees should only make exceptions if no alternative participants are available.
Even then, they should ensure that students complete the consent form of their own free will, and subsequent audits should be conducted to verify this.
This highlights four major issues in the NTNU case. First, the instructor contravened research ethics and their responsibilities as an educator. Second, the research and ethics committee that reviewed the project might have failed in its duties. Third, NTNU mishandled the complaints and petition process. Last, the NSTC and the ministry did not provide adequate oversight of the project.
This incident should serve as a catalyst for agencies and educational institutions to place greater emphasis on research ethics and enforce their implementation more rigorously.
Lin Jin-jia is a psychiatrist.
Translated by Kyra Gustavsen
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