Tuskegee was invasive, abusive, etc., etc., and done without the subjects' knowledge or consent. In fact, the facts were misrepresented and they had few choices in the matter.

This wasn't just a Tuskegee "thing"; it was common, and included a lot of other research that provided information that was really useful. Perhaps it could have been obtained in other ways; perhaps not.

When I did some human research, I had to go through a board just because there was a small--very, very small--chance of harming the subjects. I used an eye tracker. An infrared source produced IR light. An IR camera was mounted on a frame and pointed at the subject's eye. A computer could figure out what the subject was looking at by monitoring the IR reflection on the subject's eye. This was deemed "invasive" and "dangerous" and the subjects had to be vetted. Often we had to use "clever" ways of describing the experiment so that the subject knew what was happening but couldn't figure out what was going on--otherwise the subject might be able to affect the outcome consciously, making the experiment pointless. Of course, the "danger" was mostly based on the possibility of older, heavier models of the headgear causing muscle aches or the person accidentally poking the camera into his eye. You'd get more IR incident on your eye from looking at a space heater.

The board thought having to vet this was just short of loony but the text of the funding source said to look at human-subject research protocol language, and that language could easily be construed as including the near-zero risk of the eye-tracking protocols. As the tech got more refined it was less and less intrusive, yet the same board that vetted experimental surgical procedures and drug trials was in charge of vetting this. Eye tracking was finally as invasive as asking somebody to put on safety goggles before an experiment, and less invasive and "abusive" than many typical high-school or Cub Scout activities for which far fewer precautions need to be taken.

At some point the protocols really need to be rewritten, not to be made stricter but laxer. If there's nothing abusive, if there's nothing personal, if there's nothing dangerous or invasive, then the only thing many people asking for even tighter protocols are working off of is fear and suspicion based on a kind of low-grade paranoia. Anti-intellectualism and fear of science that leads to rampant anti-vaxxer and anti-GMO and anti-clmate-change and ... and ... has to stop before we're entirely post-Enlightenment and firmly back in a pre-Galilean mindset but with much fancier toys.

Yes, America's Psychologists Abetted Torture
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016129591

Chapter 21-Omaha
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016139460

K&R.

My familiarity with this issue is superficial, admittedly, but here's why your overgeneralized bluster is unacceptable - a counterexample in a heartbeat.

SOURCES:

http://www.democracynow.org/2007/1/19/medical_apartheid_the_dark_history_of
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/10/31/deadly_monopolies_medical_ethicist_harriet_washington

https://pritzker.uchicago.edu/about/news/pritzkerpulse/2007summer/washington.shtml

http://www.amazon.com/Medical-Apartheid-Experimentation-Americans-Colonial/dp/076791547X/
http://www.amazon.com/Deadly-Monopolies-Corporate-Itself-Consequences/dp/0385528922/

* http://www.morganverkamp.com/august-27-2014-press-release-statement-of-william-w-thompson-ph-d-regarding-the-2004-article-examining-the-possibility-of-a-relationship-between-mmr-vaccine-and-autism/