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Science Magazine Podcast

The normals | Episode 3

Science Magazine Podcast

Science Podcast

Science, News, News Commentary

4.3842 Ratings

🗓️ 21 April 2026

⏱️ 33 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The final of a three-part limited Science Podcast series that looks at the history of normal human subjects in research In episode two, we heard what happened to the normals program after church volunteers came to the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s Clinical Center—and were surprisingly happy despite going through sometimes-painful procedures. In the decades to follow, the program got bigger as government funding expanded and started to recruit more broadly, stepping away from specific religious groups toward recruiting from colleges, universities, and unions. In this episode, we hear about how normal human subjects experience research today and the ways the normals project influenced oversight and safety for these sometimes vulnerable people. All episodes in this series Appearing in this episode: Laura Stark, history professor at the Center for Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt University Jill Fisher, professor of social medicine in the Center for Bioethics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Kaviya Manoharan, lecturer and clinical research program manager in the Centre for Clinical Pharmacology, SRM Medical College Hospital and Research Centre Martin Enserink, deputy news editor at Science Kevin McLean, Science multimedia managing producer Sarah Crespi, Science Podcast senior host and producer Additional resources: BOOKS The Normals: A People’s History of Modern America in Five Human Experiments by Laura Stark Adverse Events: Race, Inequality, and the Testing of New Pharmaceuticals by Jill Fisher NEWS STORIES Global effort aims to protect health and safety of human ‘guinea pigs’ in drug trials by Martin Enserink Key global bioethics guidelines get ‘dramatic’ update by Cathleen O’Grady WEBSITES Volrethics Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Last episode, we talked about what happened to the Normals program after the days of the

0:08.5

happy normals that came over from the Anabaptist churches.

0:11.7

The program got bigger, as the government funding continued to expand, started recruiting

0:16.7

more broadly, stepping away from specific religious groups towards colleges, universities,

0:22.3

and unions.

0:23.6

But as budgets started to shrink nationwide, the Normals program shrank along with it and

0:28.5

started to turn to more hourly patients.

0:31.1

Meanwhile, thousands and thousands of research fellows came through the system and conducted

0:36.6

all these different experiments,

0:38.2

making it really difficult to judge the value of the normals program in the 60s and 70s.

0:43.4

Laura Stark's book, The Normals, wraps up in the 1980s, right after the death of Bernadette

0:48.9

Gilchrist.

0:50.4

But the Normals Project at NIH continues.

0:58.6

It's revealing that the program changed its name then.

1:00.3

Oh, when did they change their name?

1:03.1

They changed their name right after Bernadette died, and it shifted more towards a public communication kind of vibe.

1:11.1

It has now the phrase public liaison in the name,

1:14.5

public liaison and patient recruitment program.

1:17.5

So not the normals or the normal controls anymore.

1:20.2

No more normalcy.

1:21.6

So today, if we were to describe the normals program,

1:24.8

it would kind of be like,

...

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