Our community deservesstrict research guidelines

Posted: Monday, November 11, 2002

One of my jobs at West Texas A&M University is to oversee "research administration," a frightening task given the amount of research at the university.

Worldwide, abuse of human subjects in research has been a problem for centuries. The growth of genetic engineering, genome research and the like has only intensified the potential for abuse. The words of the prosecutors at Nuremberg ring true today: "The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated."

Some history: At Nuremberg, the Allies tried 24 German scientists for "crimes against humanity" in which they tortured "Jews and other undesirables" in experimental surgery without anesthesia at Ravensbruck, sterilization studies at Auschwitz, and typhus and poison research at Buchenwald. Dachau was the center of Nazi human experimentation testing human toleration to seawater, hypothermia and high altitude. Each experiment continued until the subject died, all in the name of science.

Seven of the Nuremberg 24 were executed and nine more received long prison terms. This despite the defense argument that research on prisoners - including research resulting in death - was common even among the Allies. (They were correct, by the way.) Their arguments, and the world's horror at Nazi "research," resulted in the Nuremberg Code, a "Geneva Convention" sort of document restricting human experimentation. Interestingly, the United States refused to adopt the Code because "research like that doesn't happen in America." In fact, in 1961, a Harvard Medical School document asserted that "the Nuremberg Code was conceived in reference to Nazi atrocities . . . and is not necessarily pertinent to . . . medical research in the U.S."

In 1964 the World Medical Association met in Helsinki, Finland to tighten up the Code resulting in the Declaration of Helsinki but again, America wouldn't admit it had any problems.

Henry Beecher's 1966 expos in the New England Journal of Medicine exposed 22 examples of unethical research in America and between 1966 and 1972 several more major breaches of American research ethics were exposed.

Still, it was not until the 1972 Washington Star expos of the Tuskegee syphilis study that Congress finally said, "Enough is enough."

It turns out that in 1932, the United States Public Health Service intentionally gave syphilis to 412 African-American men. Neither the men nor their relatives knew they were given syphilis. Further, the Public Health Service carefully tracked the men, ensuring denial of treatment, until they all died.

To sum it up, our government - without consent - intentionally gave its own citizens a treatable disease and actively blocked treatment until they all died. Perhaps one of you can explain to me how that is different from what the Nazis did at Dachau.

Well, Congress finally acted, and we now have extensive laws protecting humans in research. Still, abuse continues.

Even in the past five years the government has shut down - due to violations of the protection of human subjects - the Department of Veterans Affairs' biggest research hospital and research hospitals at the following universities: Illinois-Chicago, Duke, Colorado, Oklahoma, Alabama and Texas (Galveston). At least two have died in medical trials. Jesse Gelsinger died in 1999 during a genetics study at Penn and another perfectly healthy subject at Johns Hopkins died in 2001 after being subjected to hexamethonium, a compound specifically prohibited for human exposure.

Pretty scary stuff, but what does this have to do with WT? Fortunately, nothing, absolutely nothing.

At West Texas A&M University, we go the extra mile to ensure all human and animal experimentation follows the strictest standards for protection. We owe it to our community to do nothing less. Further, we must do everything possible as a research community to ensure the atrocities of the Nazis and the murders of the Tuskegee study never happen again.
