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Violation of Bioethics

Of the four pillars of bioethics (autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice), Southam’s cancer cell experiment violated all four and failed to meet bioethical regulations despite the medical progress he was able to make.

• Non-Maleficence: In his experiments, it was found that the cancer cells did have the potential to grow and develop tumors in patients. In cases where subjects already had cancer, by injecting them with the cancer cells he ended up giving them even more cancer cells that continued to grow^[12]. Bernard Pisanie, the former president of the Medical Society of the County of New York stated, “The known hazards of such experiments include growth of nodules and tumor and may result in a metastasis of cancer if the patient does not reject the cells”.^[11]
• Beneficence: In his studies, the patients did not benefit any personal gain and were subjected to dangerous and painful injections. Because he injected patients with cancer cells to record the effects on them, Southam’s research did not help his subjects. Elinor Langer writes that for Southam “to test the hypothesis that the slower rate of rejection in the cancer patients was in fact attributed to their cancer and not to the general debility that accompanies any chronic illness, it was necessary to perform the experiment on patients severely ill with nonmalignant diseases”.^[13]