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…
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…
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,…
American Medical Association rejects request from 5,000 black physicians to join the AMA. The rejection was widely reported in German medical jounals. (Lifton, Nazi Medicine: the anti-Hippocratic Legacy) Not until July 2008, did the American Medical Association issue a formal apology for discriminating against black physicians well into the 1960s….
Lubeck, Germany: 240 infants were vaccinated with the Calmette tuberculosis vaccine during the first 10 days of life: almost all developed tuberculosis and 72 infants died from contaminated live BCG tuberculosis vaccine. Two people who had prepared the vaccine in the local laboratory went to prison for bodily injury due…
Arthur Wentworth, MD, a pediatrician trained at Harvard Medical School, performed spinal taps on 29 babies and young 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.” (Grodin and Glantz, Children As Research…
