Or procedures may have mixed values, in part beneficial to the patient, in part beneficial to his fellows. Just because an operation is a minor one and is very likely to be harmless, there is danger of assuming that the new knowledge to be obtained from testing it justifies the test, even without the consent of the person on whom it is tried. Such an assumption is a serious error. There is no more primitive and fundamental right which any individual possesses than that of controlling the uses to which his own body is put. Mankind has struggled for centuries for the recognition of this right.
Civilized society is based on the recognition of it.
The lay public is perfectly clear about it. Any hospital or physician known to commit or to allow violation of the sacredness of the person becomes at once the object of hostility. And the law, as an expression of public conscience, declares that deliberate injury done to the body of another is an assault, and provides severe punishment for it. Society as now constituted will obviously not countenance any operation performed for the satisfaction of the operator of for the assurance of the investigator, whether or not for the immediate benefit of others, unless the consent of the person on whom the operation to be performed has previously been obtained. No doubt the justice of this ethical standard is generally recognized in the medical profession, and the spirit of the Hippocratic oath shows that from the earliest times this primary regard for the patient has been the core of the physician's honor.