William C Black MD conducted unethical medical experiments on children. He wrote a report about an experiment in which he had infected a 12-month old baby with herpes. Francis Payton Rous, editor of the Journal of Experimental Medicine, rejected Black’s manuscript and wrote an editorial in the Journal stating:
Dr. Payton Rous 1966 Nobel Prize Winner
“I cannot let this occasion pass without saying that in my personal view th inoculation of a twelve month old infant with herpes virus obtained from an adult was an abuse of power, an infringement of the rights of an individual, and not excusable because the illness which followed had implications for science. The statement that the child was ‘offered as a volunteer’ – whatever that may mean – does not palliate the action.(Rous, 1941, quoted by Michael Grodin and Leonard Glanz. Children as Research Subjects: Science, Ethics, and Law, 1994)
Nevertheless, Black published his report in the Journal of Pediatrics, 1942. Black selected at random, 23 children from his patients and injected them with infected herpes tissues to demonstrate symptoms that were caused by a single herpes virus. (Timothy Murphy. The Ethics of Research with Children, AMA, 2003)
Dr. Rous received the Nobel prize 50 years after he discovered the transmittable virus causing sarcoma cancer in chickens, but his discovery had been rejected by most pathologists. For about forty years his momentous discovery had little impact, because scientists were not prepared to think of viruses as agents of cancer.
Probably few Bible scholars or scientists are aware that Daniel—the same Daniel who was cast into the lion’s den—was also a scientist. Daniel proposed (what is now recognized as) a classic experimental design: comparing the effect of a vegetable and water diet to a diet of the king’s meat and…
Louis Pasteur, a French chemist, microbiologist who laid the foundation for vaccines. After testing the rabies vaccine in 50 dogs, he tested the vaccine on 9-year-old Joseph Meister who was bitten by a rabid dog with a physician in attendance. The experiment was controversial and he was brought before the…
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)
Cornelius Rhoads, MD, a prominent, Harvard trained pathologist conducted a cancer experiment in Puerto Rico under the auspices of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Investigations resulting in the death of thirteen subjects. He was accused of purposely infecting his Puerto Rican subjects with cancer cells after a Puerto Rican physician…
Alfred Hess & Mildred Fish used orphans as guinea pigs in studies testing dietary factors in rickets and scurvy by withholding essential nutrients from institutionalized infants until they developed the disease. Orange juice was withheld until the infants developed hemorrhages associated with Scurvy. Konrad Bercovici, a social worker, strongly criticized…
Dr. Leo Stanley, chief surgeon at San Quentin Prison for forty years, performed a wide variety of unethical experiments — which were eugenics in nature — on hundreds of prisoners. He focused on rejuvenating their masculinity through two bizarre methods: sterilization, and by implanting them with “testicular substances” from executed…
