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.
Some thoughts on the Nuremberg Code’s 75th anniversary by Ash, a Student of History… >> Go to Nuremberg75.com to get a free copy of The Nuremberg Code – Commemorative Edition << The post was cross-posted at Bailiwick News Doctors’ Trial: Never Forget For the past nine months I’ve been pseudonymously serializing…
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)
J. Marion Sims 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. Read: Wendy Brinker, 2002.
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…
Giuseppe Sanarelli, MD, Italian bacteriologist injects the bacillus causing yellow fever five patients without their consent. Three of the five patients died. Dr. William Osler publicly admonished Sanarelli, stating: “To deliberately inject a poison of known high degree of virulency into a human being, unless you obtain the man’s sanction,…
“Leaders of the American Medical Association briefly considered amending the organization’s code of ethics to include the provision that human experimentation calling for the knowledgeable permission of the subject. The AMA leadership decided not to adopt such a stance believing it both unnecessary in light of the good moral character…
