Human Experiments: A Chronology of Human Research

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[sSRI-Research] Human Experiments: A Chronology of Human Research

 

 

 

 

Human Experiments: A Chronology of Human Research

by Vera Hassner Sharav

http://www.ahrp.org/history/chronology.php

 

6th century B.C.: Meat and vegetable experiment on young Jewish

prisoners in Book of Daniel.

 

5th century B.C: " Primum non nocere " ( " First do no harm " ), medical

ethics standard attributed to Hippocrates. This Oath became obligatory

for physicians prior to practicing medicine in the 4th century AD

 

1st century B.C. Cleopatra devised an experiment to test the accuracy

of the theory that it takes 40 days to fashion a male fetus fully and

80 days to fashion a female fetus. When her handmaids were sentenced

to death under government order, Cleopatra had them impregnated and

subjected them to subsequent operations to open their wombs at

specific times of gestation.

[http://www.jlaw.com/Articles/NaziMedExNotes.html#1]

 

12th century: Rabbi and physician Maimonides' Prayer: " May I never see

in the patient anything but a fellow creature in pain. "

 

1796 Edward Jenner injects healthy eight-year-old James Phillips first

with cowpox then three months later with smallpox and is hailed as

discoverer of smallpox vaccine.

 

1845-1849: J. Marion Sims, " the father of gynecology " performed

multiple experimental surgeries on enslaved African women without the

benefit of anesthesia. After suffering unimaginable pain, many lost

their lives to infection. One woman was made to endure 34 experimental

operations for a prolapsed uterus.

http://www.coax.net/people/lwf/jm_sims.htm

 

 

1865: French physiologist Claude Bernard publishes " Introduction to

the Study of Human Experimentation, " advising: " Never perform an

experiment which might be harmful to the patient even though highly

advantageous to science or the health of others. "

 

1896: Dr. Arthur Wentworth performed spinal taps on 29 children at

Children's Hospital, Boston, to determine if the procedure was

harmful. Dr. John Roberts of Philadelphia, noting the non-therapeutic

indication, labeled Wentworth's procedures " human vivisection. "

 

1897: Italian bacteriologist Sanarelli injects five subjects with

bacillus searching for a causative agent for yellow fever.

 

1900: Walter Reed injects 22 Spanish immigrant workers in Cuba with

the agent for yellow fever paying them $100 if they survive and $200

if they contract the disease.

 

1900: Berlin Code of Ethics. Royal Prussian Minister of Religion,

Education, and Medical Affairs guaranteed that: " all medical

interventions for other than diagnostic, healing, and immunization

purposes, regardless of other legal or moral authorization are

excluded under all circumstances if (1) the human subject is a minor

or not competent due to other reasons; (2) the human subject has not

given his unambiguous consent; (3) the consent is not preceded by a

proper explanation of the possible negative consequences of the

intervention. " http://www.geocities.com/artnscience/00berlincode.pdf

 

1906: Dr. Richard Strong, a professor of tropical medicine at Harvard,

experiments with cholera on prisoners in the Philippines killing thirteen.

 

1913: Pennsylvania House of Representatives recorded that 146 children

had been inoculated with syphilis, " through the courtesy of the

various hospitals " and that 15 children in St. Vincent's House in

Philadelphia had had their eyes tested with tuberculin. Several of

these children became permanently blind. The experimenters were not

punished.

 

1915: A doctor in Mississippi, working for the U.S. Public Health

Office produces Pellagra in twelve Mississippi inmates in an attempt

to discover a cure for the disease

 

 

1919-1922: Testicular transplant experiments on five hundred prisoners

at San Quentin.

 

1927: Carrie Buck of Charlottesville is legally sterilized against her

will at the Virginia Colony Home for the Mentally Infirm. Carrie Buck

was the mentally normal daughter of a mentally retarded mother, but

under the Virginia law, she was declared potentially capable of having

a " less than normal child. " By the 1930s, seventeen states in the U.S.

have laws permitting forced sterilization

 

The settlement of Poe v. Lynchburg Training School and Hospital (same

institution, different name) in 1981 brought to an end the Virginia

law. It is estimated that as many as 10,000 perfectly normal women

were forcibly sterilized for " legal " reasons including alcoholism,

prostitution, and criminal behavior in general.

 

 

1931: Lubeck, Germany, 75 children die in from pediatrician's

experiment with tuberculosis vaccine.

 

1931: Germany adopts " Regulation on New Therapy and Experimentation "

requiring all human experiments to be preceded by animal experiments.

This law remained in effect during the Nazi regime.

 

1931: Dr. Cornelius Rhoads, a pathologist, conducted a cancer

experiment in Puerto Rico under the auspices of the Rockefeller

Institute for Medical Investigations. Dr. Rhoads has been accused of

purposely infecting his Puerto Rican subjects with cancer cells.

Thirteen of the subjects died. A Puerto Rican physician uncovered the

experiment an investigation covered-up the facts. Despite Rhoads' hand

written statements that the Puerto Rican population should be

eradicated, Rhoads went on to establish U.S. Army Biological Warfare

facilities in Maryland, Utah, and Panama, and was later named to the

U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. Rhoads was also responsible for the

radiation experiments on prisoners, hospital patients, and soldiers.

The American Association for Cancer Research honored him by naming its

exemplary scientist award the Cornelius Rhoads Award.

 

 

1932-1972: U.S. Public Health Service study in Tuskegee, Alabama of

more than 400 black sharecroppers observed for the natural course of

untreated syphilis.

 

1932: Japanese troops invade Manchuria. Dr. Shiro Ishii, a prominent

physician and army officer begins preliminary germ warfare experiments.

 

1936: Japan's Wartime Human Biowarfare Experimentation Program.

 

1938: Japan establishes Unit 731 in Pingfan, 25 km. from Harbin. Unit

731, a biological-warfare unit disguised as a water-purification unit,

is formed outside the city of Harbin.

 

1939: Third Reich orders births of all twins be registered with Public

Health Offices for purpose of genetic research.

 

1939: Twenty-two children living at the Iowa Soldiers' Orphans' Home

in Davenport were the subjects of the " monster " experiment that used

psychological pressure to induce children who spoke normally to

stutter. It was designed by one of the nation's most prominent speech

pathologists, Dr. Wendell Johnson, to test his theory on the cause of

stuttering.

 

1940: Poisonous gas experiments at Unit 731. One experiment conducted

September 7-10, 1940, on 16 Chinese prisoners who were exposed to

mustard gas in a simulated battle situation.

 

1940-1941: Unit 731 used aircraft to spread cotton and rice husks

contaminated with the black plague at Changde and Ningbo, in central

China. About 100 people died from the black plague in Ningbo as a result.

 

1940's: In a crash program to develop new drugs to fight Malaria

during World War II, doctors in the Chicago area infected nearly 400

prisoners with the disease. Although the Chicago inmates were given

general information that they were helping with the war effort, they

were not informed about the nature of the experiment. Nazi doctors on

trial at Nuremberg cited the Chicago studies as precedents to defend

their own research aimed at aiding the German war effort.

 

 

 

1941: Sterilization experiments at Auschwitz.

 

1941-1945: Typhus experiments at Buchenwald and Natzweiler

concentration camps.

 

1941: Dr. William c. Black inoculated a twelve month old baby with

herpes. He was criticized by Francis Payton Rous, editor of the

Journal of Experimental Medicine, who called it " an abuse of power, an

infringement of the rights of an individual, and not excusable because

the illness which followed had implications for science. " Dr. Rous

rejected outright the fact that the child had been " offered as a

volunteer. "

 

1942 -1945: Unit 731. Ishii begins " field tests " of germ warfare and

vivisection experiments on thousands of Chinese soldiers and

civilians. Chinese people who rebelled against the Japanese occupation

were arrested and sent to Pingfan where they became human guinea pigs;

there is evidence that some Russian prisoners were also victims of

medical atrocities.

 

" I cut him open from the chest to the stomach and he screamed terribly

and his face was all twisted in agony. He made this unimaginable

sound, he was screaming so horribly. But then finally he stopped. This

was all in a day's work for the surgeons, but it really left an

impression on me because it was my first time. " NYT

 

These prisoners were called 'maruta' (literally 'logs') by the

Japanese. After succumbing to induced diseases - including bubonic

plague, cholera, anthrax - the prisoners were usually dissected while

still alive, their bodies then cremated within the compound. Tens of

thousands died. The atrocities were committed by some of Japan's most

distinguished doctors recruited by Dr. Ishii.

 

1942: High altitude or low pressure experiments at Dachau

concentration camp.

 

1942: Harvard biochemist Edward Cohn injects sixty-four Massachusetts

prisoners with beef blood in U.S. Navy-sponsored experiment.

 

1942: Japanese sprayed cholera, typhoid, plague, and dysentery

pathogens in the Jinhua area of Zhejian province (China). A large

number of Japanese soldiers also fell victim to the sprayed diseases.

 

1942-1943: Bone regeneration and transplantation experiments on female

prisoners at Ravensbrueck concentration camp.

 

1942-1943: Freezing experiments at Dachau concentration camp.

 

1943 Refrigeration experiment conducted on sixteen mentally disabled

patients who were placed in refrigerated cabinets at 30 degree

Farenheit, for 120 hours, at University of Cincinnati Hospital., " to

study the effect of frigid temperature on mental disorders. "

 

1942-1943: Coagulation experiments on Catholic priests at Dachau

concentration camp.

 

1942-1944: U.S. Chemical Warfare Service conducts mustard gas

experiments on thousands of servicemen.

 

1942-1945: Malaria experiments at Dachau concentration camp on more

than twelve hundred prisoners.

 

1943: Epidemic jaundice experiments at Natzweiler concentration camp.

 

1943-1944: Phosphorus burn experiments at Buchenwald concentration camp.

 

1944: Manhattan Project injection of 4.7 micrograms of plutonium into

soldiers at Oak Ridge.

 

1944: Seawater experiment on sixty Gypsies who were given only

saltwater to drink at Dachau concentration camp.

 

1944-1946: University of Chicago Medical School professor Dr. Alf

Alving conducts malaria experiments on more than 400 Illinois prisoners.

 

1945: Manhattan Project injection of plutonium into three patients at

Billings Hospital at University of Chicago.

 

1945: Malaria experiment on 800 prisoners in Atlanta.

 

1946: Opening of Nuremberg Doctors Trial by U.S. Military Tribunal.

 

1945: Japanese troops blow up the headquarters of Unit 731 in final

days of Pacific war. Ishii orders 150 remaining ''logs'' (i.e., human

beings) killed to cover up their experimentation. Gen. Douglas

MacArthur is named commander of the Allied powers in Japan.

 

1946: U.S. secret deal with Ishii and Unit 731 leaders cover up of

germ warfare data based on human experimentation in exchange for

immunity from war-crimes prosecution.

 

1946-1953: Atomic Energy Commission sponsored study conducted at the

Fernald school in Massachusetts. Residents were fed Quaker Oats

breakfast cereal containing radioactive tracers.

 

1946: Patients in VA hospitals are used as guinea pigs for medical

experiments. In order to allay suspicions, the order is given to

change the word " experiments " to " investigations " or " observations "

whenever reporting a medical study performed in one of the nation's

veteran's hospitals.

 

1947: Colonel E.E. Kirkpatrick of the U.S. Atomic Energy Comission

issues a secret document (Document 07075001, January 8, 1947) stating

that the agency will begin administering intravenous doses of

radioactive substances to human subjects.

 

1947: The CIA begins its study of LSD as a potential weapon for use by

American intelligence. Human subjects (both civilian and military) are

used with and without their knowledge.

 

 

1947: Judgment at Nuremberg Doctors Trial sets forth " Permissible

Medical Experiments " - i.e., the Nuremberg Code, which begins: " The

voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. "

 

1949: Intentional release of radiodine 131 and xenon 133 over Hanford

Washington in Atomic Energy Commission field study called " Green Run. "

 

1949: Soviet Union's war crimes trial of Dr. Ishii's associates.

 

1949-1953: Atomic Energy Commission studies of mentally disabled

school children fed radioactive isotopes at Fernald and Wrentham schools.

 

1940s-1950s: " psychic driving " and " mental departterning " experiments

conducted by Dr. Ewen Cameron, depriving patients of sleep, using

massive ECT combined with psychoactive drugs such as, LSD. After his

" treatments " patients were unable to function. In the 1950's

Dr.Cameron's experiments were sponsored by the CIA.

 

1950: Dr. Joseph Stokes of the University of Pennsylvania infects 200

women prisoners with viral hepatitis.

 

1950: U.S. Army secretly used a Navy ship outside the Golden Gate to

spray supposedly harmless bacteria over San Francisco and its

outskirts. Eleven people were sickened by the germs, and one of them died.

 

 

1951-1960: University of Pennsylvania under contract with U.S. Army

conducts psychopharmacological experiments on hundreds of Pennsylvania

prisoners.

 

1952-1974: University of Pennsylvania dermatologist Dr. Albert Kligman

conducts skin product experiments by the hundreds at Holmesburg

Prison; " All I saw before me, " he has said about his first visit to

the prison, " were acres of skin. "

 

1952: Henry Blauer injected with a fatal dose of mescaline at New York

State Psychiatric Institute of Columbia University. U.S. Department of

Defense, the sponsor, conspired to conceal evidence for 23 years. I

 

1953 Newborn Daniel Burton rendered blind at Brooklyn Doctor's

Hospital due to high oxygen study on RLF.

 

1953-1957: Oak Ridge-sponsored injection of uranium into eleven

patients at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

 

1953-1960: CIA brainwashing experiments with LSD at eighty

institutions on hundreds of subjects in a project code named " MK-ULTRA. "

 

1953-1970: U.S. Army experiments with LSD on soldiers at Fort Detrick, Md.

 

1954-1974: U.S. Army study of 2,300 Seventh-Day Adventist soldiers in

157 experiments code named " Operation Whitecoat. "

 

1950s -1972: Mentally disabled children at Willowbrook School (NY)

were deliberately infected with hepatitis in an attempt to find a

vaccine. Participation in the study was a condition for admission to

institution.

 

1956: Dr. Albert Sabin tests experimental polio vaccine on 133

prisoners in Ohio.

 

1958-1962: Spread of radioactive materials over Inupiat land in Point

Hope, Alaska in Atomic Energy Commission field study code named

" Project Chariot. "

 

1962: Thalidomide withdrawn from the market after thousands of birth

deformities blamed in part on misleading results of animal studies;

the FDA thereafter requires three phases of human clinical trials

before a drug can be approved for the market.

 

1962 to 1966, a total of 33 pharmaceutical companies tested 153

experimental drugs at Holmesburg prison (PA) alone.

 

1962-1980 Pharmaceutical companies conduct phase I safety testing of

drugs almost exclusively on prisoners for small cash payments.

 

1962: Injection of live cancer cells into 22 elderly patients at

Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital in Brooklyn. Administration covered

up, NYS licensing board placed the principal investigator on probation

for one year. Two years later, American Cancer Society elected him

Vice President.

 

1962: Stanley Milgram conducts obedience research at Yale University.

 

1963: NIH supported researcher transplants chimpanzee kidney into

human in failed experiment.

 

1963-1973: Dr. Carl Heller, a leading endocrinologist, conducts

testicular irradiation experiments on prisoners in Oregon and

Washington giving them $5 a month and $100 when they receive a

vasectomy at the end of the trial.

 

1964: World Medical Association adopts Helsinki Declaration, asserting

" The interests of science and society should never take precedence

over the well being of the subject. "

 

1965-1966: University of Pennsylvania under contract with Dow Chemical

conducts dioxin experiments on prisoners at Holmesburg.

 

1966: Henry Beecher's article " Ethics and Clinical Research " in New

England Journal of Medicine.

 

1966: U.S. Army introduces bacillus globigii into New York subway

tunnels in field study.

 

1966: NIH Office for Protection of Research Subjects ( " OPRR " ) created

and issues Policies for the Protection of Human Subjects calling for

establishment of independent review bodies later known as

Institutional Review Boards.

 

1967: British physician M.H. Pappworth publishes " Human Guinea Pigs, "

advising " No doctor has the right to choose martyrs for science or for

the general good. "

 

1969: Judge Sam Steinfield's eloquent dissent in Strunk v. Strunk, 445

S.W.2d 145, the first judicial suggestion that the Nuremberg Code

should influence American jurisprudence.

 

1969. Milledgeville Georgia, investigational drugs tested on mentally

disabled children. No institutional approval.

 

1969: San Antonio Contraceptive Study conducted on 70 poor

Mexican-American women. Half received oral contraceptives the other

placebo. No informed consent.

 

1973 Ad Hoc Advisory Panel issues Final Report of Tuskegee Syphilis

Study, concluding " Society can no longer afford to leave the balancing

of individual rights against scientific progress to the scientific

community. "

 

1974: National Research Act establishes National Commission for the

Protection of Human subjects and requires Public Health Service to

promulgate regulations for the protection of human subjects.

 

1975: The Department of Health, Education and Welfare (DHEW) raised

NIH's 1966 Policies for the Protection of Human subjects to regulatory

status. Title 45 of the Code of Federal Regulations, known as " The

Common Rule, " requires the appointment and utilization of

institutional review boards (IRBs).

 

1976: National Urban League holds National Conference on Human

Experimentation, announcing " We don't want to kill science but we

don't want science to kill, mangle and abuse us. "

 

1978: Experimental Hepatitis B vaccine trials, conducted by the CDC,

begin in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Ads for research

subjects specifically ask for promiscuous homosexual men.

 

1979: National Commission issues Belmont Report setting forth three

basic ethical principles: respect for persons, beneficence, and justice.

 

Ê 1980: The FDA promulgates 21 CFR 50.44 prohibiting use of prisoners

as subjects in clinical trials shifting phase I testing by

pharmaceutical companies to non-prison population.

 

Ê 1981: Leonard Whitlock suffers permanent brain damage after deep

diving experiment at Duke University.

 

1986: Congressional subcommittee holds one-day hearing in Washington,

called by Rep. Pat Williams of Montana, aimed at determining whether

U.S. prisoners of war in Manchuria were victims of germ-warfare

experimentation. Hearing is inconclusive.

 

1981-1996: Protocol 126 at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle.

 

Ê 1987: Supreme Court decision in United States v. Stanley, 483 U.S.

669, holding soldier given LSD without his consent could not sue U.S.

Army for damages.

 

Ê 1987: " L-dopa challenge and relapse " experiment conducted on 28 U.S.

veterans who were subjected to psychotic relapse for study purposes at

the Bronx VA.

 

Ê 1990: The FDA grants Department of Defense waiver of Nuremberg Code

for use of unapproved drugs and vaccines in Desert Shield.

 

Ê 1991: World Health Organization announces CIOMS Guidelines which set

forth four ethical principles: respect for persons, beneficence,

nonmaleficence and justice.

 

Ê 1991: Tony LaMadrid commits suicide after participating in study on

relapse of schizophrenics withdrawn from medication at UCLA.

 

Ê 1993: Kathryn Hamilton dies 44 days after participating in breast

cancer experiment at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle.

 

Ê 1994. The Albuquerque Tribune publicizes 1940s experiments involving

plutonium injection of human research subjects and secret radiation

experiments. Indigent patients and mentally retarded children were

deceived about the nature of their treatment.

 

Ê 1994. President Clinton appoints the Advisory Commission on Human

Radiation Experiments (ACHRE) The ACHRE Report

http://tis.eh.doe.gov/ohre/roadmap/achre/index.html

 

Ê 1995. U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) published Human Radiation

Experiments, listing 150 plus an additional 275 radiation experiments

conducted by DOE and the Atomic Energy Commission, during the

1940s-1970s.

http://tis.eh.doe.gov/ohre/roadmap/experiments/0491doca.html#0491_List

 

Ê 1995: 19-year-old University of Rochester student Nicole Wan dies

after being paid $150 to participate in MIT-sponsored experiment to

test airborne pollutant chemicals.

 

Ê 1995. President Clinton appoints the National Bioethics Advisory

Commission.

 

Ê 1995: NYS Supreme Court rules (TD v NYS Office of Mental Health)

against the state's policy of conducting nontherapeutic experiments on

mentally incapacitated persons - including children - without informed

consent. Justice Edward Greenfield ruled that parents have no

authority to volunteer their children:

 

" Parents may be free to make martyrs of themselves, but it does not

follow that they may make martyrs of their children. "

 

 

1995: Thirty-four healthy, previously non-aggressive New York City

minority children, boys aged 6 to 11 years old, were exposed to

fenfluramine in a nontherapeutic experiment at the New York State

Psychiatric Institute. The children were exposed to this neurotoxic

drug to record their neurochemical response in an effort to prove a

speculative theory linking aggression to a biological marker.

1996. Cleveland Plain Dealer investigative report series, 'Drug

Trials: Do People Know the Truth About Experiments,' December 15 to

18, 1996. The Plain-Dealer found: of the " 4,154 FDA inspections of

researchers testing new drugs on people [since 1977] . . . more than

half the researchers were cited by FDA inspectors for failing to

clearly disclose the experimental nature of their work. "

 

1996: Yale University researchers publish findings of experiment that

subjected 18 stable schizophrenia patients to psychotic relapse in an

amphetamine provocation experiment at West Haven VA.

 

1997. President Clinton issues a formal apology to the subjects of the

Tuskegee syphilis experiments. NBAC continues investigation into

genetics, consent, privacy, and research on persons with mental disorders.

 

1997. Researchers at the University of Cincinnati publish findings of

experiment attempting to create a " psychosis model " on human beings at

the Cincinnati VA. Sixteen patients, experiencing a first episode

schizophrenia, were subjected to repeated provocation with

amphetamine. The stated purpose was to produce " behavioral

sensitization. This process serves as a model for the development of

psychosis, but has been little studied in humans. Symptoms, such as

severity of psychosis and eye-blink rates, were measured hourly for 5

hours. "

 

1997. U.S. government sponsored placebo-controlled experiment

withholds treatment from HIV infected, pregnant African women. NY

Times, Sept. 18.

 

1997. Victims of unethical research at major U.S. medical centers -

including the NIMH - testify before the National Bioethics Advisory

Commission, Sept. 18.

 

1997. FDA Modernization Act gives pharmaceutical companies a huge

financial incentive - a 6 month patent exclusivity extension - if they

conduct drug tests on children. The incentive can yield $900 million.

 

1998. National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) Report. Research

Involving Subjects with Mental Disorders That May Affect

Decisionmaking Capacity. November 12, 1998

http://bioethics.georgetown.edu/nbac/capacity/TOC.htm

 

 

1998: The Japanese government has never formally apologized for Unit

731's activities, and did not even admit to its existence until August

1998, when the Supreme Court ruled that the existence of the unit was

accepted in academic circles.

 

1998. Complaint filed with OPRR about experiments that exposed

non-violent children in New York City to fenfluramine to find a

predisposition to violence.

 

 

1998: Boston Globe (four part) series, " Doing Harm: Research on the

Mentally Ill " shed light on the mistreatment and exploitation of

schizophrenia patients who have been subjected to relapse producing

procedures in unethical experiments.

1999: Nine month-old Gage Stevens dies at Children's Hospital in

Pittsburgh during participation in Propulsid clinical trial for infant

acid reflux.

 

1999: 18-year-old Jesse Gelsinger dies after being injected with 37

trillion particles of adenovirus in gene therapy experiment at

University of Pennsylvania.

 

1999: Director of National Institute of Mental Health suspends 29

clinical trials that failed to meet either ethical or scientific

standards.

 

2000: University of Oklahoma melanoma trial halted for failure to

follow government regulations and protocol.

 

2000: OPRR becomes Office of Human Research Protection ( " OHRP " ) and

made part of the Department of Health and Human Services.

 

 

2000: President Clinton implement the Energy Employees Occupational

Illness Compensation Act of 2000, which authorized compensation for

thousands of Department of Energy workers who sacrificed their health

in building the nation's nuclear defenses.

 

2000: The Washington Post (6 part) series, " Body Hunters " exposes

unethical exploitation in experiments conducted by U.S. investigators

in underdeveloped countries. Part 4 dealt with U.S. government funded,

genetic experiments conducted by Harvard University in rural China.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26797-2000Dec19.html

 

 

2001: A biotech company in Pennsylvania asks the FDA for permission to

conduct placebo trials on infants in Latin America born with serious

lung disease though such tests would be illegal in U.S.

 

2001: Ellen Roche, a healthy 27-year old volunteer, dies in challenge

study at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

 

2001: April 4, Elaine Holden-Able, a healthy retired nurse, consumed a

glass of orange juice that had been mixed with a dietary supplement

for the sake of medical research. This Case Western University

Alzheimer's experiment, financed by the tobacco industry, wound up

killing her in what was called a ''tragic human error.'' Federal

Office of Human Research Protections did not interview hospital staff,

mostly accepted hospital's internal report, imposed no penalty, and

closed the case and did not mention the death in its letter of

determination. http://ohrp.osophs.dhhs.gov/detrm_letrs/nov01f.pdf

 

 

2001: Maryland Court of Appeals renders a landmark decision affirming

" best interest of the individual child " as a standard for medical

research involving children. The Court unequivocally prohibited

nontherapeutic experimentation on children. (Higgins and Grimes v.

Kennedy Krieger Institute).The case involved exposure of babies and

small children to lead poisoning in EPA funded experiment.

(http://www.courts.state.md.us/opinions/coa/2001/128a00.pdf)