Introduction: Unconscionable U.S. Government-Funded Medical Experiments exposed human subjects to serious risk of harm without any intended benefit to the individual. They were conducted without voluntary, informed consent decades after the Nuremberg Code set ethical standards for civilized medical experiments. The human subjects were either coerced or unwitting: they included military troops, prisoners, mentally disabled persons, institutionalized children, and hospitalized patients. Thousands suffered irreparable harm and an untold number died.
Dr. Krugman deliberately infected mentally disabled children who were confined at Willowbrook School (NY) with hepatitis B. The school housed 6,000 children in abominable conditions. In one experiment, children were fed excrement containing live hepatitis B virus. In another experiment children were injected with live hepatitis virus in an effort…
In July, 1961, Merck and Parke-Davis recalled their Salk vaccines — without mentioning the cancer risk. NIH officials concealed the SV40 cancer risk and never recalled the rest of the polio vaccine supply. Even after they knew that the vaccine was infected, they continued to expose millions of Americans to…
A report by Dr. Fred Jensen, in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute describes an experiment performed in patients terminally ill with cancer. The researchers took tissue from the patients, exposed the tissue to SV40, then they implanted the infected tissue back into the patients. Result: these implants grew…
1960–1972: University of Cincinnati Medical School conducted whole body radiation experiments on 90 seriously ill cancer patients at its charity hospital — 60% were poor African Americans. Read more Radiation experiments
Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, conducted the first of a series of “Obedience to Authority” experiments shortly after the trial of Adolph Eichman, the Nazi criminal tried in Jerusalem for crimes against humanity. Eichman’s defense was, not guilty, claiming that he had merely followed orders. Milgram sought to learn the…
Dr. Chester Southam injected live cancer cells into 22 elderly patients at Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital in Brooklyn. After being rebuffed by his institution, Sloan-Kettering, he convinced Dr. Emanuel Mandel at Jewish Chronic Disease. He sought to learn whether people who were debilitated by cancer could reject cancer cells. None…
1963–1973: “Reproductive radiation experiments” were conducted on 64 prison inmates by Dr. C. Alvin Paulsen (University of Washington) under a private contract with the Atomic Energy Commission (now the Energy Department). Read more * Radiation experiments.
1966: NIH Office for Protection of Research Subjects (OPRR) created Policies for the Protection of Human Subjects calling for the establishment of independent review bodies later known as Institutional Review Boards.
1966: Animal Welfare Act establishes ethical use of laboratory animals in research. There is no law protecting human research subjects from unethical experimentation. 1966: Henry Beecher’s article “Ethics and Clinical Research” in New England Journal of Medicine identified 50 unethical clinical studies. But it would be eight years before a…
1967: British physician Maurice Pappworth published Human Guinea Pigs: Experimentation on Man; he was far less circumspect than Beecher. He identified researchers by name and provided their institutional affiliations, stating bluntly: “No doctor, however great his capacity or original his ideas, has the right to choose martyrs for science or…
Sixty-four California prisoners were paralyzed with succinylcholine, a neuromuscular agent that restricts breathing. Succinylcholine has since been used in lethal injection protocols. When five prisoners in the California experiment refused to participate as subjects in the experiment, researchers were given “permission” to inject the recalcitrant prisoners against their will. (Harriet…
San Antonio Contraceptive Study conducted on 70 poor Mexican-American women. Half received oral contraceptives the other placebo. In the middle of the study the two groups were switched — none were informed that they may not receive active contraceptives. [NCBI-NIH]
