Bioethics and the national security state

Abstract

In previous work, I have described the history and ethics of human experiments for national security purposes during he cold war and developed the bioethical issues that will be apparent in the "war on terror". This paper is an attempt to bring these two previous lines of work together under the rubric of the "national security state," a concept familiar to Cold War historians and political scientists. The founding of the national security state was associated with the first articulations of informed consent requirements by national security agencies. My analysis indicates that strengthened consent standards, though conventionally thought to be antithetical crisis, can be seen as an attempt by the postwar national security state to protect itself from critics of expanded governmental power. During the coming years the renewed mission of the national security state in the war on terror should impel students of bioethics to consider its implications for the field.