Science Magazine Podcast

The final of a three-part limited Science Podcast series that looks at the history of normal human subjects in research

In episode two, we heard what happened to the normals program after church volunteers came to the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s Clinical Center—and were surprisingly happy despite going through sometimes-painful procedures. In the decades to follow, the program got bigger as government funding expanded and started to recruit more broadly, stepping away from specific religious groups toward recruiting from colleges, universities, and unions.

In this episode, we hear about how normal human subjects experience research today and the ways the normals project influenced oversight and safety for these sometimes vulnerable people.

All episodes in this series

Appearing in this episode:


Laura Stark, history professor at the Center for Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt University


Jill Fisher, professor of social medicine in the Center for Bioethics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill


Kaviya Manoharan, lecturer and clinical research program manager in the Centre for Clinical Pharmacology, SRM Medical College Hospital and Research Centre


Martin Enserink, deputy news editor at Science


Kevin McLean, Science multimedia managing producer

Sarah Crespi, Science Podcast senior host and producer

Additional resources:

BOOKS


The Normals: A People’s History of Modern America in Five Human Experiments by Laura Stark


Adverse Events: Race, Inequality, and the Testing of New Pharmaceuticals by Jill Fisher

NEWS STORIES


Global effort aims to protect health and safety of human ‘guinea pigs’ in drug trials by Martin Enserink


Key global bioethics guidelines get ‘dramatic’ update by Cathleen O’Grady

WEBSITES

Volrethics

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First up on the podcast, quantum computers require extremely low temperatures—less than 1°C away from absolute zero. But getting down to those temperatures has usually required dilution fridges using the extremely rare and increasingly expensive isotope helium-3. Freelance science journalist Zack Savitsky joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss up-and-coming technologies that can drive down temperatures while staying helium-3–free.

Next on the show, Nizan Packin, a professor of law at the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College, talks about prediction markets as a public health threat. Early on, prediction markets were proposed as a way to make reliable forecasts from crowdsourced wisdom. With the appearance of commercial, for-profit prediction markets linked with cryptocurrency and sports betting, Nizan and colleagues ask what studies should be done to better understand potential harms to the public.

Finally, in a Working Life column this week, recent Ph.D. graduate Filippo Dall’Armellina wrote about how his foray into science podcasting helped him regain enjoyment of research. He talks about why having a science-adjacent hobby was life changing.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

About the Science Podcast
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Last time on The Normals, we learned that in the 1950s, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) wanted to recruit many healthy volunteers for basic research. Two peace churches, the Mennonites and the Church of the Brethren, had an excess of healthy human volunteers. The “Normals” recruited from these Anabaptist churches were surprisingly happy, even as they went through sometimes painful procedures.

In this follow-up episode, we hear about how the sources of normal human subjects changed in the 1960s and why NIH researchers felt they needed to expand their search for normal people. We also learn about the first death in the program and the shifting motives on the parts of the researchers and volunteers. Final episode drops next Tuesday, April 21.

All Normals episodes

In this episode:


Laura Stark, history professor at the Center for Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt University

Ken Naas, former Normal patient

Cindy Jansen, former Normal patient

Dale Horst, former Normal patient

Sarah Crespi, Science Podcast senior host and producer

Additional resources:

The Normals: A People’s History of Modern America in Five Human Experiments by Laura Stark
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First up on the podcast, freelance science journalist Hannah Richter joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss NASA’s plans to send a nuclear-powered spacecraft to Mars in less than 3 years. Having not launched a fission reactor to space in more than 60 years, the organization faces many technical and bureaucratic hurdles to make that deadline.

Next on the show, Aaron Sandel, associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin and co-director of the Ngogo Chimpanzee Project, reports this week in Science on what looks like a chimpanzee civil war. The unprecedented violent split occurred in a large chimp colony that has been tracked by researchers for decades. Now, scientists are asking: What can the lethal division of a chimp community teach us about human conflict?

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

About the Science Podcast
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How do we know what's normal in a person? In the early 1950s, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) set out to do something unprecedented. It wanted to start studying normal humans on a grand scale. It had pretty much everything in place: It had the building, it had recruited all of these amazing researchers—it was the healthy human bodies NIH didn't have. How do we know what’s normal in a person? In the early 1950s, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) set out to do something unprecedented. It wanted to start to study normal humans on a grand scale. It had pretty much everything in place: It had the building, it had recruited all of these amazing researchers—it was the healthy human bodies NIH didn’t have. When the healthy subjects arrived, experimenters tested LSD, sleep devrivation, rice-only diets, and more risky intervetions on them. Where it found those volunteers and what happened next is the story of The Normals. 

Starting on 7 April, the Science Podcast will be releasing a new three-part limited series called The Normals.

We'll hear from some of the original “Normals,” follow the program through the decades, and see what's happening with healthy human subject research today.

All Normals episodes

Appearing in this episode:


Laura Stark, history professor at the Center for Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt University

Dale Horst, former Normal patient

Shirley Burry Geissinger, former Normal patient

Sarah Crespi, Science Podcast senior host and producer

Additional resources:

The Normals: A People’s History of Modern America in Five Human Experiments by Laura Stark

 
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