HIV Trial in Libya - Truth behind it? (Aug/01/2007 )

Useful Bodies collects historical accounts of twentieth-century human experiments. Although some chapters discuss well-known scandals, such as the hepatitis studies on mentally disabled children at Willowbrook State School in New York, most cover less familiar, yet equally serious, territory. The contributors show how the desire for scientific knowledge can blind government officials and professionals to the full human consequences of their actions. In this respect, they offer worthwhile lessons for contemporary researchers, scholars and policy-makers.

The editors argue that the conventional scholarly focus on deficits in informed consent and on experiments explicitly labeled as 'biomedical research' limits our understanding of past events and might also impair our ability to discern unethical practices today. To avoid this myopia, the editors present projects discussed in Useful Bodies as examples of a larger twentieth-century development in which "the modern state increasingly used its prerogative to lay claim to the individual body for its own needs, whether social, economic, or military."

Several chapter authors adopt the editors' broad perspective. Brian Balmer, for instance, describes germ warfare tests in the United Kingdom after World War II. Officials worried about potential attacks sponsored studies involving the environmental release of what were thought to be harmless materials, such as zinc cadmium. The trials were seen as a military defense program that did not warrant public disclosure. But Balmer contends that because of the agents' unproven safety, the authorities should have given the public an opportunity to evaluate whether the experiments were justified by national security needs.

A strange British and Australian military project, described by Glenn Mitchell, is also portrayed as a disguised form of research. Officers were enrolled in classes about atomic physics and then given the 'opportunity' to witness atomic bomb explosions. They were then sent back to their units "to spread the word about their positive reactions to atomic blasts." The objective was to determine whether this "Indoctrinee Force" could boost morale and generate positive feelings about atomic weapons and nuclear energy technology. Again, the soldiers were not explicitly recognized as research subjects, but Mitchell argues that they should have been. These were inadequately informed human participants, he contends, exposed to the risks of an atomic blast as part of a government experiment.

Other studies also departed from the standard research model. In the 1920s, as Margaret Humphreys reports, physicians exposed advanced syphilis patients to malaria, a 'therapeutic craze' at the time. Malaria researchers realized that the popular treatment offered something for them too: an opportunity to study the natural course of malaria in a controlled setting. Humphreys explores ethical issues that flowed from the syphilis patient's dual status. For example, the researchers were physicians accustomed to treating malaria patients. Yet the syphilis regimen, as well as their own research objectives, demanded that malaria treatment be withheld. Humphreys describes how malariologist Mark Boyd sometimes chose to provide quinine to very sick patients.

Elswhere, Useful Bodies discusses projects explicitly recognized as human experimentation. David Jones and Robert Martensen chronicle the activities of University of California scientists studying radiation effects on soldiers, prisoners and patients. Eventually, the ambitious 'radiation missionaries' established a facility independent of the University of California San Francisco medical school, which enabled them to avoid the medical staff's ethical objections to certain studies. Gilbert Whittemore and Miriam Boleyn-Fitzgerald describe a 1950s experiment at the Massachusetts General Hospital in which seriously ill subjects were injected with uranium. This 'dual use' project sought information on cancer therapies and safe exposure levels for atomic weapons workers. The records indicate that investigators may have been less than candid with patients and families about the low chance of therapeutic benefit. Indeed, the authors assert that although Atomic Energy Commission personnel were extremely careful in handling the uranium, hospital researchers failed to observe the same level of care toward the human subjects.

The Willowbrook studies are also examined from a fresh angle. Researcher Saul Krugman contended that because hepatitis infection was almost inevitable for school residents, his studies intentionally exposing children posed little added risk. But Joel Howell and Rodney Hayward argue that Krugman's data do not support the claim of high baseline infection rates. They urge social scientists and historians to look critically at the numbers, as well as the words, when evaluating researchers' conduct. In another chapter, Jenny Stanton compares the Willowbrook study with UK studies of yellow fever, jaundice and hepatitis during the 1930s and 40s. All of the studies included questionable practices, Stanton notes, because researchers exposed subjects to serious harm without informed and voluntary consent. But because the Willowbrook work was reported in numerous medical journals, its ethical problems were also widely publicized. In contrast, the UK experiments produced many fewer publications, partly because researchers were worried about the public reaction to their use of human subjects.

Useful Bodies makes a strong case for adopting a broad perspective in the analysis of research ethics. Though written by academic historians, the book is aimed at a wider audience. At times, a few authors do resort to jargon and other 'insider' talk. Yet readers from other fields who persevere will be well rewarded. Besides gaining a rich picture of past scientific practices, they will be better equipped to monitor the continuing search for 'useful bodies' in our own era.

I highlighted this particular news because it has raised question about ethics of researchers and how much can one scientist be unethical to do their experiment: and people have some doubts about scientific researches going on humans. Scientists have been blamed to have conducted human experiments that are insanely unethical even today and I don't know to what extent they are true usually in nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare researches.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Stud..._the_Negro_Male