The Experiment Must Continue
Medical Research and Ethics in East Africa, 1940–2014

“Graboyes’ arguments are critical for contemporary researchers who must understand how the ‘residue’ of each experiment alters the course of the next. … [Her] book, which does not presume knowledge of the history and ethnography of medical research in Africa, is written in engaging and jargon-free prose. …[It] is certain to prompt lively classroom discussions about global health, African medical research in colonial and postcolonial times, and the history of medicine.”

Journal of Interdisciplinary History

“[The Experiment Must Continue] will be of great interest to medical historians and anthropologists, East African historians, and global health researchers and bioethicists engaged in research in the Global South today … [The book] is to be applauded as a pathbreaking, engaging historical analysis of the practices, ethics, and implications of experimental medical research in one African postcolony.”

African Studies Review

“This is a remarkable contribution—scrupulously researched, innovatively organized, engagingly written, and passionately argued. To my knowledge, there is nothing published that can match the scope, temporal depth, or ethnographic finesse of this work. The manuscript is a superb example of how rigorous historical research opens up reflections on the unresolved ethical problems of contemporary global health research.”

Tamara Giles-Vernick, Director of Research, Institut Pasteur

“Graboyes’s book reads like a mystery, elegantly weaving history, science, bioethics and public health into a compelling story. A profoundly important contribution to the challenges of conducting medical research in the developing world.”

Michael A. Grodin, M.D., professor of bioethics and human rights, Boston University School of Public Health

The Experiment Must Continue is a beautifully articulated ethnographic history of medical experimentation in East Africa from 1940 through 2014. In it, Melissa Graboyes combines her training in public health and in history to treat her subject with the dual sensitivities of a medical ethicist and a fine historian. She breathes life into the fascinating histories of research on human subjects, elucidating the hopes of the interventionists and the experiences of the putative beneficiaries.

Historical case studies highlight failed attempts to eliminate tropical diseases, while modern examples delve into ongoing malaria and HIV/AIDS research. Collectively, these show how East Africans have perceived research differently than researchers do and that the active participation of subjects led to the creation of a hybrid ethical form.

By writing an ethnography of the past and a history of the present, Graboyes casts medical experimentation in a new light, and makes the resounding case that we must readjust our dominant ideas of consent, participation, and exploitation. With global implications, this lively book is as relevant for scholars as it is for anyone invested in the place of medicine in society.

Melissa Graboyes, a historian, examines topics related to global health, ethics, and biomedicine in East Africa. She is the author of The Experiment Must Continue: Medical Research and Ethics in East Africa, 1940–2014. She teaches in the Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon.   More info →