unethical human experimentation in the united states unethical human experimentation in the united states numerous experiments which are performed on human test subjects in the united states are considered unethical, because they are performed without the knowledge or informed consent of the test subjects. such tests have been performed throughout american history, but some of them are ongoing. the experiments include the exposure of humans to many chemical and biological weapons (including infections with deadly or debilitating diseases), human radiation experiments, injections of toxic and radioactive chemicals, surgical experiments, interrogation and torture experiments, tests which involve mind-altering substances, and a wide variety of other experiments. many of these tests are performed on children, the sick, and mentally disabled individuals, often under the guise of "medical treatment". in many of the studies, a large portion of the subjects were poor, racial minorities, or prisoners. a subject of the tuskegee syphilis experiment has his blood drawn, c. 1953 many of these experiments violated us law. some others were sponsored by government agencies or rogue elements thereof, including the centers for disease control, the united states military, and the central intelligence agency, or they were sponsored by private corporations which were involved in military activities. the human research programs were usually highly secretive and performed without the knowledge or authorization of congress, and in many cases information about them was not released until many years after the studies had been performed. the ethical, professional, and legal implications of this in the united states medical and scientific community were quite significant, and led to many institutions and policies that attempted to ensure that future human subject research in the united states would be ethical and legal. public outrage in the late 20th century over the discovery of government experiments on human subjects led to numerous congressional investigations and hearings, including the church committee and rockefeller commission, both of 1975, and the 1994 advisory committee on human radiation experiments, among others. surgical experiments throughout the 1840s, j. marion sims, who is often referred to as "the father of gynecology," performed surgical experiments on enslaved african women, without anesthesia. the women— one of whom was operated on 30 times— suffered from infections and many failed surgeries before they were finally cured. the period during which sims operated on female slaves, between 1845 and 1849, was one during which the new practice of anesthesia was not universally accepted as safe and effective. to test one of his theories about the causes of trismus in infants, sims performed experiments where he used a shoemaker's awl to move around the skull bones of the babies of enslaved women. it has been claimed that he addicted the women in his surgical experiments to morphine, only providing the drugs after surgery was already complete, to make them more compliant. a contrary view is presented by the gynecologic surgeon and anthropologist l.l. wall: "sims' use of postoperative opium appears to have been well supported by the therapeutic practices of his day, and the regimen that he used was enthusiastically supported by many contemporary surgeons." in 1874, mary rafferty, an irish servant woman, came to dr. roberts bartholow of the good samaritan hospital in cincinnati, ohio for treatment of a lesion on her head. the lesion was diagnosed as a cancerous ulcer and surgical treatments were attempted. bartholow saw rafferty's condition as terminal but felt there was a research opportunity. he inserted electrode needles into her exposed brain matter to gauge her responses. this was done with no intention of treating her. although rafferty came out of the coma caused by the experiment three days later, she died from a massive seizure the following day. bartholow described his experiment as follows: when the needle entered the brain substance, she complained of acute pain in the neck. to develop more decided reactions, the strength of the current was increased ... her countenance exhibited great distress, and she began to cry. very soon, the left hand was extended as if in the act of taking hold of some object in front of her; the arm presently was agitated with clonic spasm; her eyes became fixed, with pupils widely dilated; lips were blue, and she frothed at the mouth; her breathing became stertorous; she lost consciousness and was violently convulsed on the left side. the convulsion lasted five minutes and was succeeded by a coma. she returned to consciousness in twenty minutes from the beginning of the attack, and complained of some weakness and vertigo.— dr. bartholow's research report in the subsequent autopsy, bartholow noted that some brain damage had occurred due to the electrodes but that she had died due to the cancer. bartholow was criticized by fellow physicians and the american medical association formally condemned his experiments as he had caused direct harm to the patient, not in an attempt to treat her, but solely to gain knowledge. additional issues were raised with the consent obtained. although she gave "cheerful assent" to the procedure, she was described as "feeble-minded" (which may have been in part due to effects of the tumor on her brain) and likely did not fully understand. bartholow apologized for his actions and expressed regret that some knowledge had been gained "at the expense of some injury to the patient." in 1896, dr. arthur wentworth performed spinal taps on 29 young children, without the knowledge or consent of their parents, at children's hospital boston (now boston children's hospital) in boston, massachusetts to discover whether doing so would be harmful. from 1913 to 1951, dr. leo stanley, chief surgeon at the san quentin prison, performed a wide variety of experiments on hundreds of prisoners at san quentin. many of the experiments involved testicular implants, where stanley would take the testicles out of executed prisoners and surgically implant them into living prisoners. in other experiments, he attempted to implant the testicles of rams, goats, and boars into living prisoners. stanley also performed various eugenics experiments, and forced sterilizations on san quentin prisoners. stanley believed that his experiments would rejuvenate old men, control crime (which he believed had biological causes), and prevent the "unfit" from reproducing. from 1955 to 1960, sonoma state hospital in northern california served as a permanent drop-off location for mentally disabled children diagnosed with cerebral palsy or lesser disorders. the children subsequently underwent painful experimentation without adult consent. many were given spinal taps "for which they received no direct benefit." reporters of 60 minutes learned that in these five years, the brain of every child with cerebral palsy who died at sonoma state was removed and studied without parental consent. pathogens, disease and biological warfare agents late 19th century in the 1880s, in hawaii, a californian physician working at a hospital for lepers injected six girls under the age of 12 with syphilis. in 1895, new york city pediatrician henry heiman intentionally infected two mentally disabled boys—one four-year-old and one sixteen-year-old—with gonorrhea as part of a medical experiment. a review of the medical literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries found more than 40 reports of experimental infections with gonorrheal culture, including some where gonorrheal organisms were applied to the eyes of sick children. u.s. army doctors in the philippines infected five prisoners with bubonic plague and induced beriberi in 29 prisoners; four of the test subjects died as a result. in 1906, professor richard p. strong of harvard university intentionally infected 24 filipino prisoners with cholera, which had somehow become contaminated with bubonic plague. he did this without the consent of the patients, and without informing them of what he was doing. all of the subjects became sick and 13 died. early 20th century in 1908, three philadelphia researchers infected dozens of children with tuberculin at st. vincent orphanage in philadelphia, pennsylvania, causing permanent blindness in some of the children and painful lesions and inflammation of the eyes in many of the others. in the study, they refer to the children as "material used". in 1909, frank crazier knowles published a study in the journal of the american medical association describing how he had deliberately infected two children in an orphanage with molluscum contagiosum—a virus that causes wart-like growths but usually disappears entirely—after an outbreak in the orphanage, to study the disease. in 1911, dr. hideyo noguchi of the rockefeller institute for medical research in manhattan, new york city injected 146 hospital patients (some of whom were children) with a syphilis extract. he was later sued by the parents of some of the child subjects, who allegedly contracted syphilis as a result of his experiments. the tuskegee syphilis experiment ("tuskegee study of untreated syphilis in the negro male") was a clinical study conducted between 1932 and 1972 in tuskegee, alabama, by the u.s. public health service. in the experiment, 399 impoverished black males who had syphilis were offered "treatment" by the researchers, who did not tell the test subjects that they had syphilis and did not give them treatment for the disease, but rather just studied them to chart the progress of the disease. by 1947, penicillin became available as treatment, but those running the study prevented study participants from receiving treatment elsewhere, lying to them about their true condition, so that they could observe the effects of syphilis on the human body. by the end of the study in 1972, only 74 of the test subjects were alive. 28 of the original 399 men had died of syphilis, 100 were dead of related complications, 40 of their wives had been infected, and 19 of their children were born with congenital syphilis. the study was not shut down until 1972, when its existence was leaked to the press, forcing the researchers to stop in the face of a public outcry. 1940s in 1941, at the university of michigan, virologists thomas francis, jonas salk and other researchers deliberately infected patients at several michigan mental institutions with the influenza virus by spraying the virus into their nasal passages. francis peyton rous, based at the rockefeller institute and editor of the journal of experimental medicine, wrote the following to francis regarding the experiments: it may save you much trouble if you publish your paper... elsewhere than in the journal of experimental medicine. the journal is under constant scrutiny by the anti-vivisectionists who would not hesitate to play up the fact that you used for your tests human beings of a state institution. that the tests were wholly justified goes without saying. rous closely monitored the articles he published since the 1930s, when revival of the anti-vivisectionist movement raised pressure against certain human experimentation. in 1941, dr. william c. black inoculated a twelve-month-old baby with herpes who was "offered as a volunteer". he submitted his research to the journal of experimental medicine which rejected the findings due to the ethically questionable research methods used in the study. rous called the experiment "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 study was later published in the journal of pediatrics. the stateville penitentiary malaria study was a controlled study of the effects of malaria on the prisoners of stateville penitentiary near joliet, illinois, beginning in the 1940s. the study was conducted by the department of medicine (now the pritzker school of medicine) at the university of chicago in conjunction with the united states army and the u.s. state department. at the nuremberg trials, nazi doctors cited the precedent of the malaria experiments as part of their defense. the study continued at stateville penitentiary for 29 years. in related studies from 1944 to 1946, dr. alf alving, a nephrologist and professor at the university of chicago medical school, purposely infected psychiatric patients at the illinois state hospital with malaria so that he could test experimental treatments on them. in a 1946 to 1948 study in guatemala, u.s. researchers used prostitutes to infect prison inmates, insane asylum patients, and guatemalan soldiers with syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases to test the effectiveness of penicillin in treating the stds. they later tried infecting people with "direct inoculations made from syphilis bacteria poured into the men's penises and on forearms and faces that were slightly abraded ... or in a few cases through spinal punctures". approximately 700 people