Adriana Ordóñez

Ética de la Investigación científica: la fiebre amarilla, la Comisión Reed y el origen del consentimiento informado

During the Nineteenth Century, research on infectious diseases and microbiology confirmed the disease’s contagionist theory, thus ruling out the miasma theory and promoting the development of techniques to isolate the microorganisms that cause infections and the discovery of mechanisms for the disease’s transmission. Given the difficulty for having animal models for several disease groups, experimentation with humans, including the researchers’ selfinoculation, became necessary. The history of yellow fever research in Cuba is a Public Health’s fundamental and paradigmatic experience and an example of the approach to infectious diseases’ triumph. However, the circumstances underlying the scientific triumphs in the fight against the American Plague tell a less known story, marked by sacrifice and heroism, which generated the foundations for Scientific Research Ethics and the origin of modern Informed Consent. Long before the Nuremberg Code, Walter Reed’s research and Carlos Finlay’s theories interacted to establish a milestone that led to the triumph of scientific medicine and to the origin of respect for strict documentation related to the integrity of volunteers involved in research.