Non-Consenting Medical Guinea Pigs

I was researching an article to use when I discovered, on Fox News, a link to another article out of Washington's The Seattle Times entitled "You may become medical guinea pig without knowing it." It caught my eye right away, because that is one of my worst fears (being used for something I didn't consent to). It just creeps me out. The article states that researchers out of the University of Washington have been conducting experiments on patients who are not able to consent to further kinds of treatment (i.e.- they are using terminally ill patients who may be in comas or suffering from sever head trauma, or stuck in vegetative states).
The program is titled "Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium" is a $50-million dollar undertaking that focuses on somewhere arounf 20,000 patients. It goes on to say that the researches haev found ways to "sidestep" any form of federal guidlines to conduct their studies. But what about moral guidlines? These people have no say in what is being done to them, although, they physically can't. They are being operated on, cut open and examined, and no one is speaking out for them.
Even though it states that the patients are chosen at random, and that "If you don’t do these studies, care will never improve," (according to the researcher Dr. Eileen Bulger. They believe they are "helping" people. Who are they erally helping here? Themselves? The patients undergoing these procedures aren't benefitting from any of this! Maybe in the long run it will be useful for people who go into comas or suffer from sever cardiac arrest in the future, but without consent in the now, there really shouldn't be any studies or operating going on WHATSOEVER.
There are underlying ethics at work here, and these dotors feel like they can just sweep that under the rug, and find loop-holes and go about their heinous infringement of the law! Bulger goes on to say in the artcile that "If we want to make an impact in people who are at very high risk of dying from their injuries, we have to be able to do these studies." I see that their intentions are good, but the way they are going about it is just wrong.
I remember reading somewhere last year about a woman who purposely poisoned herself with something like clorox, bleach, or Draynol, and went to the hospital with a hand-written note stating she would not like to be "saved," but be relieved of the pain from opisoning herself so she could not die so painfully. The doctors in that case agreed to her consent to deny any "saving." They helped her die as painlessly as possible, which is what she wanted when she first set out to kill herself. Why do doctors refuse to care for someone who is obviously dying, refuses treatment, and just let her...die, and do nothing about the consent laws in regards to the poor souls in the Seattle Times' article?
It baffles me, it really does.

For the whole article, I shall submit a link:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003732713_labrats03m.html