Public Health Chronicles

In this provocative and moving historical essay, Bateman-House asks questions that are as relevant today as they were 60 years ago: How do we protect the rights and moral beliefs of the individual against sometimes subtle, yet powerful, coercive pressures? What happens when the ostensibly humane values of public health come up against the realities of wartime national mobilization? As she forcefully illustrates through a look at voluntary participation in human experimentation during wars, when patriotism collides with our deepest human values, the question of what is and what is not free choice can become terribly ambiguous. Bateman-House asks: “How should constrained circumstances affect the way we think about the decision to enter into a research project? Is severely limited choice in and of itself coercive, or is there a spectrum of choosing where choice is limited?” Here, we learn both of the heroism of the conscientious objector and the subtle ways their patriotism and moral beliefs collided and coalesced during the “Good War.”