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.
William C. Black, MD, 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) M Hines Roberts described in a major medical journal an…
The Carnegie Institution established the Station for Experimental Evolution at Cold Spring Harbor, under the directorship of Charles Davenport, which became the foundation for the eugenics movement. Eugenics uses pseudo-scientific techniques and hypotheses to support racism. “Historians of race and American medicine have documented over two centuries of race-based scientific…
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…
The Hippocratic medical ethics oath is attributed to Hippocrates, and was adopted as a guide to the medical profession conduct throughout the ages and still used in the graduation ceremonies of many medical schools. In essence, the Hippocratic Oath: “Primum non nocere” (“First do no harm” or “Above all, do…
Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE) Report Ch. 2, 1995. Lawrence Altman. Who Goes First? The Story of Self-Experimentation in Medicine, 1988 Appeal from the Lübeck Decision, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), 1932 Nicholas Bakalar. Where the Germs Are: A Scientific Safari, 2003 Edwin Black. War Against…
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)
