Luke Dittrich, Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets

Excerpt

According to the American Psychological Association’s code of ethics, psychologists should “strive to benefit those with whom they work and take care to do no harm.” First established in 1953, the code has since been a work in progress. Decades ago, experimentation could involve procedures that would now be considered too harmful; over time, the standards have become more stringent. For example, the notorious Stanford prison experiment of 1971 was approved by the Stanford Human Subjects Committee. In that experiment, students who volunteered to participate in a simulation of a prison environment were randomly assigned to take on the roles of either prisoners or guards in a study of the psychological effects of power. The experiment had to be terminated prematurely because the students assigned to the role of prison guards began acting sadistically. No replications of this study have been attempted since. Ethics committees now deem that what can be learned from such experimentation does not provide enough of a benefit to offset the harm done to the participants. In Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets, Luke Dittrich recounts the evolution of ethical standards for the treatment of the most vulnerable of human subjects, the mentally ill and neurologically impaired, interwoven into the story of one of the most famous and important cases in the history of neurology and psychology. …