Are we all research subjects? The extension of clinical experimentation from the modern era to the digital age.

Experimentation on human beings has been a major medical issue since antiquity. In modern times, it has become even more acute with the development of a resolutely scientific approach to medicine. Which subjects should be included in research? How should they be recruited? Does a social selection of research subjects coexist with the established biological and medical selection? In this paper, we will review the data available in the social science literature to examine the evolution of patient participation in medical research from the birth of scientific medicine in the 19th century to the emergence of digital research tools today. We hypothesize that a trend towards greater social inclusiveness can be observed over time. To this end, we will distinguish three main periods during which the meaning of patient participation evolves: consented participation, claimed participation and democratized participation.