The ‘Guinea Pigs’ of Tristan da Cunha and the Ethics of Medical Research in Britain and the Empire, 1961–1973

Abstract

Summary This article relates the history and explores the ethical issues that gathered around the decade of studies that researchers collaborating with the Medical Research Council (MRC) undertook on the islanders from Tristan da Cunha. In 1961, the volcanic island in the southern Atlantic erupted and the community took refuge in Britain. Believing that the islanders held the secret to good health, the MRC coordinated a research programme through a specially formed Working Party. But as the investigations grew more numerous, so too did the ethical questions. Some doctors, administrators, reporters and the public wondered about the propriety of exposing this community to medical scrutiny. In 1963, the islanders returned home. Investigators, along with ethical issues, followed. Long hidden, these persistent discussions made visible the ethics of medical research on a colonial population. The Working Party’s story thus inserts an imperial dimension into the historiography of post-war British medical ethics.