Ethics of studies involving human volunteers. I. Historical background.

The evaluation of personal products using panels of human volunteers is crucial to the continued development of the industry. Nowadays, however, it is increasingly important to ensure that such studies are both safe for the participants and are ethical. As a means of defining general rules for judging and justifying the ethics of human testing, historical milestones in the development of human experimentation are given. While most experience originates from biomedical research, findings help establish standards of ethical review of non-therapeutic human testing used in the cosmetics industry.