Home > People > Beecher Award
Beecher Award
The Beecher Award is named after Henry Knowles Beecher (1904-1976), who was
an enormously influential presence in the history of medicine and bioethics.
Beecher served as Anaesthetist-in-Chief at Massachusetts General Hospital
and Instructor in Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School. His best-known contribution
to the field of bioethics was his article written in 1966, "Ethics
and Clinical Research," which presented twenty-two examples of experiments
on humans conducted by renowned investigators in which basic standards of
human subject treatment, as outlined in the Nuremberg Code of 1947, were disregarded.
Following the article's publication, the National Institutes of Health and
the Food and Drug Administration changed their guidelines to require peer-reviewed
supervision and evidence of informed consent during all human experiments.
Beecher's revelations led to the creation of the Institutional Review Board
system. Dr. Beecher received the award in April 1976.
Other recipients of the Beecher Award:
Hans Jonas: June 1978
Joseph Fletcher: June 1981
Paul Ramsey: June 1981
Robert S. Morison: June 1984
Richard A. McCormick: June 1988
Willard Gaylin: June 1989
Daniel Callahan: June 1989
Jay Katz: June 1993
Sissela Bok: February 1996
K. Danner Clouser: May 1996
Raanan Gillon: September 1999
Alastair Vincent Campbell: September 1999
Edmund D. Pellegrino: April 2003
Library | Visitors & Interns | Online Store | Manage My Account
Make a gift | Links | Site Index | Contact Us | Privacy | Terms Of Use
Last Updated: 04 November 2003