Bioethicist Carl Elliott seems to relish stirring up fellow bioethicists and the medical profession. In his latest book, The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No, he examines the role of whistleblowers in uncovering medical scandals. The New York Times recently published a brief excerpt from his book in which he asks why doctors end up participating in atrocities like the Tuskegee syphilis trials or the Willowbrook hepatitis study.