[DrSAR]

It seems that people are ignoring the fact that we are already experimenting on humans on a fairly large scale: All drugs in most countries are only approved after a scheme involving 3 phases of trials.

Phase 1 trials are to test safety and possibly design input for the next (phase 2) trial. In particular in oncology, there is no expectation that a patient in phase 1 will even potentially benefit from an experimental drug but there will likely be (detrimental) side effects in the high-dose groups at which point we back off.

So let's acknowledge that many of the (more modern) drugs we take are also a result of fairly heroic consent from human patient volunteers without any chance of personal gain.