The ethical issues and conflicts facing anthropology have precedents in the past because they are intrinsic to anthropological practice. What is different about them now is that they are played out in new sites, with added complexities, and without changed relations of anthropologists to those with stakes in their research, especially "the people" they study. A review of the unintended consequences of the American Anthropological Association's efforts to define a code of ethics in the 1960s offers lessons that are applicable today.