The book provides a systematic account of the basic conflict of values in dealing with experiments on human beings and establishes various models to solve this conflict. In doing so, it focuses on the problem of research, in particular on persons who are not able to give their consent. Various ethical arguments pertaining to this are discussed in order to establish whether or not studies seem to be ethically justified if there is no therapeutic benefit. In the second part of the work, using these philosophical implications as a basis and France as an example, the question is to what extent certain normative convictions and arguments depend on the social, historical and cultural context in which they are discussed.