Minority Health and Health Equity Archive
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/21769
Welcome to the Minority Health and Health Equity Archive (MHHEA), an electronic archive for digital resource materials in the fields of minority health and health disparities research and policy. It is offered as a no-charge resource to the public, academic scholars and health science researchers interested in the elimination of racial and ethnic health disparities.
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Item Moral Science: Protecting Participants in Human Subjects Research(2011) UNSPECIFIEDThe Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues today issued its report concerning federally-sponsored research involving human volunteers, concluding that current rules and regulations provide adequate safeguards to mitigate risk. In its report, “Moral Science: Protecting Participants in Human Subjects Research," the Commission also recommended 14 changes to current practices to better protect research subjects, and called on the federal government to improve its tracking of research programs supported with taxpayer dollars. President Obama requested that the Commission undertake an assessment of research standards following the October 2010 revelation that the U.S. Public Health Service supported unethical research in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948 that involved intentionally exposing thousands of Guatemalans to sexually transmitted diseases without their consent. The President gave the Bioethics Commission two assignments: to oversee a thorough fact-finding investigation into the specifics of the studies (released September 13, 2011); and to assure that current rules for research participants protect people from harm or unethical treatment, domestically as well as internationally.Item Improvements, database urged in wake of 1940s research(2011) Ove, TorstenA presidential ethics panel said that federally sponsored research involving human subjects provides adequate safeguards to reduce risk but also recommended some improvements such as the creation of a central, publicly available database to keep track of experiments. In a report released today, the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues suggested 14 changes to current practices and called on the federal government to improve the way it monitors research supported by taxpayers. The report is the second phase of a government mission undertaken in the wake of revelations in 2010 that John Cutler, a former U.S. Public Health…Item "Ethically Impossible" STD Research in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948(2011) UNSPECIFIEDFollowing the revelation last fall that the PHS supported research on sexually transmitted diseases in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948, President Obama asked the Bioethics Commission to oversee a thorough fact-finding investigation into the studies. Commission staff carefully reviewed more than 125,000 original pages of documents and approximately 550 secondary sources collected from public and private archives around the country. Commission staff also completed a fact finding trip to Guatemala and met with Guatemala’s own internal investigation committee. The PHS research involved intentionally exposing and infecting vulnerable populations to sexually transmitted diseases without the subjects’ consent. “In the Commission’s view, the Guatemala experiments involved unconscionable basic violations of ethics, even as judged against the researchers’ own recognition of the requirements of the medical ethics of the day,” Commission Chair Amy Gutmann, Ph.D., said. “The individuals who approved, conducted, facilitated and funded these experiments are morally culpable to various degrees for these wrongs.” The full report, Ethically Impossible: STD Research in Guatemala from 1946-1953, also includes the Commission’s ethical analysis of the case.Item Panel Hears Grim Details of Venereal Disease Tests(2011) McNeil, Donald G.Gruesome details of American-run venereal disease experiments on Guatemalan prisoners, soldiers and mental patients in the years after World War II were revealed this week during hearings before a White House bioethics panel investigating the study’s sordid history. From 1946 to 1948, American taxpayers, through the Public Health Service, paid for syphilis-infected Guatemalan prostitutes to have sex with prisoners. When some of the men failed to become infected through sex, the bacteria were poured into scrapes made on the penises or faces, or even injected by spinal puncture.Item Presidential panel excoriates former Pitt dean(2011) Ove, TorstenA presidential ethics panel today excoriated the late Dr. John Cutler, a revered dean at the University of Pittsburgh in the 1960s, and his colleagues at the U.S. Public Health Service for deliberately infecting hundreds of Guatemalan prisoners, mental patients, soldiers and prostitutes with syphilis from 1946 to 1948, including 83 who died. The Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues concluded that Dr. Cutler's experiments were morally indefensible, even for the standards of the time, and that he and his fellow doctors tried to keep secret what they were doing because they knew it was wrong.Item Panel to report on controversial medical research project(2011) Ove, TorstenA presidential panel investigating a controversial 1940s medical research project in Guatemala led by a doctor who later became a prominent professor and dean at the University of Pittsburgh will discuss its findings on Monday at a public meeting in Washington, D.C. Since last fall, the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues has been investigating U.S. Public Health Service experiments conducted by Dr. John Cutler in which he deliberately infected almost 700 Guatemalan prisoners, mental patients and soldiers with syphilis without their knowledge. After issuing an apology for the research, President Barack Obama directed his bioethics panel to…Item The Inoculation Studies in Guatemala: a webinar with Susan Reverby, PhD(2010) Reverby, Susan M.The Guatemala syphilis study, unearthed by medical historian, Susan M. Reverby, is another shocking and sadly familiar example of the abuse of human subjects in research. Ms. Reverby will present her findings in a webinar titled The Guatemalan Inoculation Study: Susan M. Reverby on Research Ethics and Lessons for HRPPs, which will address the horrific story of US public health researchers intentionally infecting hundreds of people in Guatemala, including mental patients, with gonorrhea and syphilis without their knowledge. A professor at Wellesley College who has published two books about the US Public Health Service Syphilis study that took place in Tuskegee, AL, Ms. Reverby will share her findings and insights on what today’s research professionals may learn from this astounding example of immoral research practices that occurred more than 60 years ago.Item Information on Protection of Human Subjects in Research Funded or Regulated by U.S. GovernmentU.S. Department of Health and, Human ServicesToday, a researcher who is compliant with current Federal regulations would not be able to conduct a study, domestically or in another country, with the ethical violations present in the Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD) Inoculation Study. The history of biomedical research in the U.S., 1940-1970’s: There was tremendous growth in research around World War II. Human subjects research entered what some scholars have described as an “unashamedly utilitarian phase.” Subjects were often institutionalized individuals who were not always fully informed of the risks of the study or asked for consent. Infectious disease research, particularly venereal diseases, was a focus of the U.S. government because of the toll diseases like syphilis and gonorrhea were taking on the armed services. One method for studying infectious disease was by intentionally infecting subjects with the disease-causing pathogen. Prisoners were commonly used because they were easily monitored in a highly controlled environment. Dr. Cutler was a researcher on two such studies: infection of prisoners with gonorrhea at the United States Penitentiary at Terre Haute (1943) and with syphilis at Sing Sing Correctional Facility (1953).Item Intentional Infection of Vulnerable Populations in 1946-1948(2010) Frieden, Thomas R.; Collins, Francis S.Unethical uses of humans as research subjects represent appalling chapters in the history of medicine. 1 To ensure that effective protections against such abuses continue to evolve and improve, it is essential to continue to learn from historical examples. Sadly, a new example has recently come to light. While conducting research on the Tuskegee study of untreated syphilis, 2 Wellesley College Professor Susan Reverby recently reviewed the archived papers of John Cutler, a US Public Health Service (PHS) medical officer and a Tuskegee investigator. Instead of finding Tuskegee records, however, Reverby found the records of another unethical study. In this study, vulnerable populations in Guatemala—mentally incapacitated patients, prison inmates, sex workers, and soldiers—were intentionally exposed to sexually transmitted infections (syphilis, gonorrhea, and chancroid). The work was directed by Cutler and was done with the knowledge of his superiors, including then Surgeon General Thomas Parran Jr. Funded with a grant fromItem MEMORANDUM FOR DR. AMY GUTMANN Chair, Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues SUBJECT: Review of Human Subjects Protection(2010) OBAMA, BARACKRecently, we discovered that the U.S. Public Health Service conducted research on sexually transmitted diseases in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948 involving the intentional infection of vulnerable human populations. The research was clearly unethical. In light of this revelation, I want to be assured that current rules for research participants protect people from harm or unethical treatment, domestically as well as internationally.