jan 1, 1916 - Walter Cannon attempts to mandate consent

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Walter Cannon, a physiologist and physiology professor at Harvard University, attempts to get the AMA to update its code of ethics to establish the role of researchers and to make consent in medical research mandatory. He was unsuccessful. Cannon's idea of ethics included both the duty to heal and to promote medical progress. He recognized the rights of the individual in "controlling the uses to which his body is put" (Carden-Coyne, 2014). Cannon was an early patient-rights activist and was concerned with ethics in research and proper treatment of human subjects.

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