Testing on human subjects isn't new - prison related

[FriscoLady]

Testing on human subjects isn't new

By Eric Fleischauer
DAILY Staff Writer

Medical experimentation on human subjects has a long history. The results have often been bad for the subjects, but on occasion they have benefited public health.

The most frightening tests were performed by Japanese and German researchers in the late 1930s and early 1940s. American researchers, however, have also participated.

Prison inmates have been the guinea pigs in most U.S. tests. Officials typically rewarded inmate participation by freeing them. Some historical examples:

Between 1932 and 1972, researchers experimented on 399 Tuskegee black men with syphilis.

The federal government gave oatmeal mixed with radioactive substances to subjects and injected infants with radioactive iodine in the 1940s.

In 1963, researchers injected patients in New York with cancer cells to study their immune response.

A professor of tropical medicine at Harvard University injected death-row prisoners in The Philippines with cholera and beriberi in 1906.

A researcher in 1915 induced pellagra, a deadly disease common in the South, in Mississippi prison inmates by restricting them to high-calorie, low-protein diets.

In 1920, a physician at San Quentin Prison grafted animal glands to the testicles of inmates.

During World War II, U.S. scientists injected inmates with cow's blood, exposed them to gonorrhea and malaria, and induced gangrene. Other tests exposed Seventh Day Adventists, who chose to participate rather than serve in the military, with mustard gas.

Also during the war, Ohio researchers locked mentally ill patients in refrigerated boxes for 120 hours to evaluate the impact of low temperatures on mental disorders.

Other researchers exposed 400 inmates in Illinois and 800 inmates in Atlanta to malaria and tested them with various experimental treatments in 1945.

In the 1950s, researchers injected live cancer cells into hundreds of Ohio inmates in an effort to understand the immune system.

In 1998, Dow Chemical administered pesticide pills to paid Nebraska college students.

[FriscoLady]

I only have one word to describe this kind of experimentation: Sick!

Patti

[Rostonhall]

Experimentation on humans, if the subjects agree, is better than on animals, they can't agree to it in any way, shape or form.

Porton Down, a large Ministry of Defence establishment over here, is being sued right now for experiments on military personnel during and after WWII. Now that I don't agree with. These men had no chance to say 'No!!' and none of them knew what they were being subjected to. That is wrong in the same way as using inmates, or other vulnerable people, but if the subjects are truly informed, checked on and know exactly what they are having done to them then I'm all for it.

The subjects must be willing and know what they are doing. But then, I'm one of those people who prefers animals to people and I've been known to demostrate outside research establishments on more than one occasion!!! Including Porton Down where, amongst other things far more secret, they shoot pigs so that Military surgeons can practice gunshot wounds!!!

Rose

[Keltria]

OMG - this reminds me of South Africas own Dr Death - Wouter Basson and all the things he did to inmates here in SA during the Apartheid era. I really feel sick to my stomach.