1714: Charles Maitland, Smallpox
Dr. Maitland inoculated six prisoners with smallpox, promising them release from prison. (Read D. Wooton, Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm Since Hippocrates, 2006.)
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1909: Luther Emmett Holt, tuberculosis
Luther Emmett Holt, a professor of children’s disease at Columbia University, was accused of conducting 1,000 tuberculin tests on sick and dying babies at NY Babies’ Hospital. (Grodin and Glantz, Children As Research Subjects)
1911: Hideyo Noguchi, MD, syphilis
Hideyo Noguchi, MD, of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research injected a syphilis preparation into 146 children — 100 were institutionalized and 46 were healthy — in an attempt to develop a skin test for syphilis. Several parents sued Dr. Noguchi for infecting their children with syphilis. (Noguchi. Journal of…
American Eugenics Research — Racism masquerading as “science”
“Whatever the motives and methods used to realise them – persuasion, education, coercion, sterilisation, segregation, euthanasia and more – eugenics has stemmed from the belief that a population, ‘race’, or even the species, is ‘degenerating’ and in urgent need of improvement and revitalisation.” (Prof. John Galloway. Review, The Oxford Handbook…
1914: Justice Benjamin Cardozo, informed consent ruling
In a lawsuit involving the Society of NY Hospital, Justice Benjamin Cardozo ruled : “Every human being of adult years and sound mind has a right to determine what shall be done with his own body, and a surgeon who performs an operation without his patient’s consent commits an assault.” But…
1900–1930: Berlin Code of Ethics
Biomedical research in Germany was considered the most advanced in the world — both in its development and its ethics standards. Berlin Code of Ethics (1900) guaranteed that “all medical interventions for other than diagnostic, healing, and immunization purposes, regardless of other legal or moral authorization are excluded under all…
1915: Joseph Goldberger, MD, pellegra
Joseph Goldberger, MD, under orders of the US Public Health Office induces Pellagra, a debilitating fatal disease affecting the central nervous system, in twelve Mississippi inmates in an attempt to discover treatments for the disease. He determined that the disease was caused by niacin (Vitamin B3) deficiency. But the Public…