9. The US Army Yellow Fever Commission volunteers
During the American study into the manner of transmission of yellow fever in Cuba in 1900-01, testing on human beings became the primary source of information. A landmark event in the development of the principle of informed consent, the Army Commission deliberately infected volunteers with blood extracted from yellow fever victims. It also exposed them to mosquitoes which fed on patients with yellow fever before biting the volunteers. Volunteers also faced exposure to blankets and other items used by known yellow fever victims, in an experiment to determine if particles known as fomites carried the disease between persons.
The volunteers received compensation, for participating and additional compensation if they got sick. They came from the Army, the Navy, the Nursing Corps, and from civilian contractors, both American and Cuban. Not all the volunteers are known today, the identities of some have been lost to history. Many volunteers were exposed, did not become ill, and forgotten. Others intervened to prevent more important, in the volunteer’s opinion, members of the commission from exposing themselves to a dangerous disease. The Commission studied the disease in three phases; infected bedding and clothing; mosquito-borne disease; blood injection experiments. Only one volunteer participated in all three phases, according to records of the commission, Warren Jernegan.