Talk:Human subject research/Archive 1

Request
From the article:


 * Please add to this page. Exposing these wrongs can help put pressure on governments and people to stop them.  Amnesty International has more information about human experimentation and Mistreatment of prisoners generally.

The Website of Amnesty International
 * I don't know when this was added, but I at least put it in its own section. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 01:30, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Copyright issue?
A fair amount of the material in this article appears to be identical to material listed as copyright University of Miami here:. Particularly, see "Beecher Article" and Public Health Syphillis Study sections. --Honeygnome 22:06, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Source Request
I'm sure there is a lot more out there to add. I was also looking for further info on the British experimentation on political prisoners pre WWI. Has anyone got any sources, I can't find any. --Dumbo1 22:48, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

The Guardian article re pre WW1 experimentation on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands doesn't seem to have any sources to back it up. Can someone please supply some, otherwise I shall remove that section. --Dumbo1 01:08, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

I wrote to the author of the Guardian article, and six weeks later, still no reponse. Can someone please supply some sources PLEASE! I'd really like to find out what this is supposed to refer to. --Dumbo1 23:08, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Removed it. A Guardian comment piece is not a reliable source of information. I'm not saying that it didn't happen, but it would need to be elaborated on and properly sourced.--Ruby Tuesday 17:03, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

NPOV stuff/Rubbish
New York City: In his documentary Guinea Pig Kids'' shown on BBC and german television filmmaker Jamie Doran exposed the practice of the New York City Administration of Children's Services to allow and enforce experiments with aids drugs against the will of the children and their relatives. Experiments took place up to 2002 in Incarnation Children's Center and are still going on in other institutions. When the children refused to take the 'medicine' because of the severely damaging effects, they were forced with tubes. Several children died. The children come primarily from black poor families who have no money for expensive lawyers to defend themselves. A nurse who had adopted two children stopped the medicamentation and the children felt much better. As a reaction the authorities took the two children away from her. The companies involved refuse to answer questions.''

I've put a NPOV-tag on the page because of this section. First of all, I would want some sources for these EXTREMELY severe allegations. Second, even if these allegations are indeed correct, the text need to be rewritten and a lot of things have to be clarified. A lot of things seems to have been taken out of their context. Why where these kids exposed to the drugs? How can we know that the children who died died because of the medicines? Why would the politicians of New York decide to experiment on children?.

I would like some input from other people to see what you think about this... Otherwise I will remove that part later today. If it is indeed accurate the page can always be reverted... I don't want to risk Wikipedia's reputation (which isn't that good already) with information this dubious.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Special:Contributions/ (talk)

--Konstantin 16:11, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

A while ago I was reading about how Pfizer (at least I recall it being Pfizer) was coming under fire for apparently distributing new meningitis drugs to Africans children, essentially using them as test subjects. I don't have time to dig up the info at the moment, but if anyone else is familiar with this issue it certainly belongs in this article. I'll try and remember to get back to it at a later time. --Bumhoolery 20:28, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

That sounds great. I will remove the information for now, and maybe if the information is indeed accurate someone can revert the article... --Konstantin 23:54, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Here's what the Incarnation Chilcren's Center has to say about the BBC "expose":

"From 1993 through early 2002, approximately 60 children at Incarnation Children’s Center participated in a nationwide series of clinical trials sponsored by the National Institutes of Health to test the efficacy of medication designed to alleviate suffering and significantly prolong the life of HIV infected children. At ICC, a foster care institution dedicated to the care of children who are infected with HIV, the trials were conducted by faculty at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons.

"ICC was only one of more than 25 foster care institutions in New York City that took part in the trials. Across the country, thousands of HIV infected children took part in the trials. The trials at ICC were successful; where previously the HIV infected children at ICC died, they lived, and are now in adolescence. According to Columbia, none of the children at ICC died as a result of the trials, and while a few experienced reactions to the drug combinations used in the trials, none suffered lasting side effects.

"Over the past months, a number of stories directed against clinical trials, most recently on the BBC, and distorting ICC’s role in the trials have appeared in the media. The source of these stories appears to be a group that holds the view that the HIV virus is not the precursor of AIDS, a view discredited by the world’s scientific and medical communities. The media that reported on ICC have been informed that their sources are a group of HIV deniers; the media has not included this important fact in their reporting. Please see a letter on this subject recently sent out by the New York State Department of Health.

"To better care for the children, who are now living into late childhood and adolescence with their HIV/AIDS controlled by medication, ICC in 2000 was formally converted from a foster care facility to a 21-bed skilled nursing facility regulated by the New York State Department of Health. The drug trials at ICC ended in early 2002, however."

That section on the main page should be removed, again.

-- Shrew2u@yahoo.com --71.107.76.55 01:28, 27 September 2005 (UTC)--

Rumors say that the disabled are experimented on....
Can't confirm, nor disprove this: I've heard that those who are either physically and/or mentally disabled are, as you read this, are being experimented upon. Can a physically and/or mentally impaired person indicate consent ? These people have always been ill treated throughout history, killed in ancient times due to religious reasons, such as a human female having sex with The Devil, and that union produced either a physically and/or mentally impaired person. Some religious sects I've ran into hold these views. Now, rumors surface that these people are being experimented upon, and no one cares. This is NOT vandalisim, nor am I being offensive, just stating what I've seen and heard, no more, no less.Martial Law 01:58, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

I travel the whole US, as, among other things, as a prospector, watercolor/multimedia artist(NO people, due to ongoing debates of what is art, what is profanity/obscenity), and I've heard these stories and worse about human experimentation, such as that performed on the people that are physically and/or mentally impaired. I will NOT repeat any of this, due to Wikipedia policies regarding obscene material.Martial Law 02:07, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

external link to "Jeff Rense"
Regarding this external link: Jeff Rense Article: US Human Experimentation


 * What exactly is the reader supposed to read on that page?
 * Does this source provide any helpful, well substantiated information on human experimentation?

Thanks...

--Birdmessenger 00:55, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

The article is about the US govt. and/or the military experimenting upon the American people, incl. prisoners,other military personnel,unwitting civilians,and I've heard rumors that children and that people who are either physically and/or mentally impaired are also being experimented upon as well. I also have a copy of a Popular Mechanics magazine that also discusses US govt. and/or military human experimentation.Martial Law 04:56, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Here is the originating source for the article. It is US Secret Human Experimentation. Hope this source is helpful.Martial Law 05:05, 25 November 2005 (UTC) The source is http//:www.healthnewsnet.com/humanexperiments.html.Martial Law 05:08, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Hope this data helps, Birdmessenger. Martial Law 05:27, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Its now a dead link. Can someone update please. --Dumbo1 23:10, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I've found the article again at http://www.rense.com/general36/history.htm. However looking at the other articles at that site, I would want some further sources and verification before using the info. --Dumbo1 23:23, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Human experimentation vs Clinical trials
This page is currently primarily about abuses in human experimentation, much of it historical. My feeling from reading it is that it needs either
 * more information about modern clinical trials that are generally considered to be ethically acceptable, if "Human Experimentation" is a neutral term not necessarily implying abuse, or else
 * a statement up at the top that (roughly) "This article describes abusive and unethical practices, for information on generally-accepted modern practices, see clinical trials, Nuremburg code, etc. This option assumes that human experimentation does primarily mean abuse, and that we should merely link to information about non-abusive trials, rather than trying to balance the existing page.

So there's the question. Does human experimentation inherently mean abuse, or can the term human experimentation apply to a best-practices clinical trial? ---Csari 15:20, 7 February 2006 (UTC)


 * The article as it stands now is trash, as noted above. Please heed this person's words and fix it. 216.39.182.234 03:02, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Copyediting
Does this article really need any more copy-editing??Dan 03:59, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Whoa, what is this?
There's a huge section in the After World War II section about the CIA killing people left and right. Now, I'm sure the CIA has killed a lot of people in secret, but this paragraph comes off as total conspiracy-theorist lunacy, and it's got plenty of typos to boot. It should either be deleted or backed up with a lot of evidence. It looks seriously bad. Pulsemeat 04:06, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Vivisection

 * Despite this, the term is generally recognized as pejorative: one would never refer to life-saving surgery, for example, as "vivisection." The use of the term vivisection when referring to procedures performed on humans almost always implies a lack of consent.

This section might be a bit confusing. I would suggest nowadays, vivisection is pejorative in any case. It's usually only used by those opposed to animal experimentation and as such I think tends to be used mostly in a negative light. Nil Einne 19:17, 13 August 2006 (UTC)


 * It looks like someone messed up or intentionally vandalized the vivisection part of this article. 91.83.6.174 —Preceding comment was added at 20:21, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Too many categories
This article is extremely cluttered, mainly because of the way it is organised. There are complications with many of the sections, mainly being unneededness, and lack of mutual exclusivity. For example; the section on "in the United States." Why is there a section devoted to human experimentation in the United States, in particular? The country in and of itself doesn't play any pivotal role in the overall history of human experimentation, so devoting a section to it is unneeded; everything that is in that section would fit nicely into another section. As for mutual exclusivity; this is a problem with many of the sections. For example, there is a section on "after World War II." But, "after World War II" isn't mutually exclusive to, say, the Belmont Principles, which is another section. In fact, several of these sections should be sub-sections, if we are to keep the "after World War II" bit. I suppose I am requesting a copy-edit of this page, with an emphasis on organisation and format. MVMosin 07:52, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Human experimentation in media
I think the needs to be a section about the suject in various medias for example Orochimaru from manga and anime Naruto. He did many humans experiments. &#91;&#91;User:The New Mikemoral&#124;&lt;font color=&quot;red&quot;&gt;The New&lt;/font&gt; &#91;&#91;User Talk:The New Mikemoral&#124;Mikemoral&lt;/font&gt;]]]] 22:14, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

While I do think you are on to something when you suggest a section devoted to media coverage of human research, I do not believe human research as portrayed in cartoons is the most relevant information one could add to the section. Eaglesrule8 (talk) 13:13, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Voluntary versus involuntary
I think that the scope of this article should be focused on involuntary human experiments and that it should be renamed as such. Either that or it should be split into two articles. (with content merged to Clinical trials. Thoughts?  Joie de Vivre 03:10, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Self-Experimentation
The comment in this article involving "self-experimentation" is a bit rubbishy. Self-experimentation is more a form of pilot study than it is a laudable attempt to not expose others to research risks. The analysis of risk-to-benefit ratio is a more important component of research ethics; self-experimentation holds very little benefit due to insufficient numbers to make any sort of valid conclusions.

For example, testing an experimental cancer drug that has shown promise in laboratory and animal studies on a population of cancer patients of statistically significant numbers who have the type of tumor the drug targets who otherwise have a poor prognosis with available treatment would have a favorable risk-to-benefit ratio and would be ethical. Self-experimentaion by a healthy researcher self-experimenting with an experimental cancer drug he/she just cooked up in his lab has an abysmal risk-to-benefit ratio and would be unethical. MultiplePOV 08-24-07.

Porton Down experiments
None of the articles gives evidence that these trials were performed without consent. In fact, one article states that "An inquiry into the deaths of some of those involved in the testing concluded in 2003 that there was not enough evidence for a criminal prosecution." http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iihvTWraOyOUml7FwZS37KuqwItg So should we still include it? Especially given that if we do, we should in fairness also add info on deceitful military testing by other traditional liberal democracies, not just dictatorships. 128.208.5.131 17:46, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

NPOV tag
I've tagged this article with an NPOV tag due to the ridiculously undue weight it gives to various forms of human experimentation on prisoners/as punishments/as human rights violations, and the complete failure of it to discuss the development of IRBs and actual guidelines on human experimentation. As it stands, this article presents human experimentation primarily as a means of torture. Phil Sandifer (talk) 15:46, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

New Perspective
I expanded this article to "Human Subject Research" instead of "Human experimentation" so that it can also present the positive aspect of this field. Essentially, they are many strict laws in place today in the US Federal Government and the WMA to protect human subjects because of past atrocities. It is unfortunate that it took so long, but people should understand that these dispicable acts are the result of insane researchers probably more so than lack of policy. The policies mereley enforce common sense in an extremely strict manner. If the policies are not common sense to someone, then they reallt have no business doing biomedical research. This article should present both persectives. Mingramh (talk) 22:48, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Floridian Pesticide Experimentation
It has come to my attention that Florida attempted to drop pesticides on its citizens in an attempt to test how people would react to the chemicals. I would like to add information of this specific event to the "U.S." section you guys already have on here. Eaglesrule8 (talk) 16:56, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Human subject research vs human experimentation (NPOV title)
While human experimentation redirects here, the category is named Category:Human experimentation, and all articles in subcategories Category:Human experimentation by country are named such. I think this creates several problems. From the technical perspective, the article names should be standarized. From the NPOV perspective, I think that "human subject research" is a more neutral term then more loaded term "human experimentation" and would thus like to propose renaming all the related categories and articles in the corresponding way. Thoughts? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 16:03, 31 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I think there is important distinction between these two terms. Human subject research refers to scientific research conducted in the framework of law and ethics. Human experimentation is a more broad term that also refers to murder and torture such as those by Josef Mengele and Mairanovsky. Thus Category:Human subject research could be a sub-category of the more broad Category:Human experimentation.Biophys (talk) 16:21, 31 March 2010 (UTC)


 * [edit conflict] "Human subject research" is being understood as related to "medical research", while "human experimentation" is connected to "human rights violations". Articles that primarily treat the human rights aspect of the facts which they present should be categorized as "human experimentation", while article that focus on procedures and results of legitimate human subject medical research should not be subsumed under the "human experimentation" category. In other words: "Human experimentation" should remain a subsubcategory of "Human rights abuses", while human subject research should not be a subcategory of "Human rights abuses". A new article on "Human experimentation" would be useful to resolve the categorization issues. (Needless to say that the treatment of a given set of facts as "human experimemtation" or as "human subject research" depends on the facts as reported by reliable sources, not on the preferences of Wikipedia editors.) Cs32en   Talk to me  16:24, 31 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree with the nominator that article and category should preferably carry the same name, and also that the term "human experimentation" is more loaded than the more technical term "human subject research". But is disagree with his conclusion and come to the opposite conclusion: since the term "human experimentation" is more clear in conveying the intended meaning, I think it should be used rather than "human subject research". The categories are named correctly therefore, and the article should be renamed. Debresser (talk) 16:25, 31 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't think that "human subject research" should be subsumed under "Human experimentation". If researchers do a study on allergies and apply allergenic substances on the back of people who take part in the study, that, in my view, has very little to do with "human experimentation". Both articles (i.e. the current one and a new one on human experimentation) should be connected by a "see also" template. Cs32en   Talk to me  16:31, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * How about "human subject research" for the general articles, and "human subject research abuses" for articles about unethical and questionable experiments? Calliopejen1 (talk) 16:50, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with Cs32en in general, but it might be difficult to separate the human rights violations and legitimate research, or tell what was an abuse and what was not. See Human experimentation in the United States as an example. I can tell that a lot of modern-day legal human subject research (supported by the NIH or other agencies) are harmful for health of the subjects. Even worse, a lot of legal medical treatments are harmful for health of patients. Biophys (talk) 16:52, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * My suggestion: to keep the existing Category:Human experimentation and place all "human subject research" there.Biophys (talk) 17:09, 31 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree with the point that there is a very legitimate debate about the human rights aspect of human subject research that is being conducted today. This debate, and the examples related to this debate, should be covered by the articles on human subject research. Human experimentation, particularly in circumstances in which subjects were considered as being racially inferior and thus on a par with animals, is a separate topic, however. Cs32en   Talk to me  18:25, 31 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree with Cs32en and Biophys -- The term Human subject research commonly refers to ethical, legal research involving human subjects, while the term "human experimentation" is generally used to be about human rights violations in scientific/medical research using humans. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 17:28, 31 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm fairly sure we we should not have separate articles, one for "bad research" and one for "good research." Human Subject Research is fairly dry and technical and doesn't, in my experience, imply that it is ethical or beneficial (legality is fairly murky in many situations).  "Human experimentation" is ambiguous anyway, since it isn't clear if the humans are the experimenters or the experimentees.  The Declaration of Helsinki uses "research involving human subjects."  OHRP (US) and the NRES (UK) use the same language.  I'm not sure if that would make a very good article title.  SDY (talk) 06:15, 1 April 2010 (UTC)


 * A look at Google Book shows that both "Human subject research" and "Human experimentation" are being used for both ethical and unethical activities. Keeping both in one article would be O.K., but it wouldn't resolve the categorization problem. Having "Human subject research" in the category "Human rights abuses" is somewhat awkward. "Human experimentation" or "Unethical/Abusive human subject research" could be a subarticle of "Human subject research", which could then be included in the category "Human rights abuses". Cs32en   Talk to me  10:17, 1 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Creating a content fork for the sake of categorization again seems like a really bad idea. Human subject research is like prison labor: sometimes it is a human rights abuse, sometimes it is an action of a well-governed society that recognizes it has benefits for the participants (i.e. work experience) as well as for society.  Is prison labor a human rights abuse?  Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, and I would have no problem including a general article on prison labor in a category on human rights abuses so long as the article meets NPOV and doesn't try to claim that it is always an abuse or never an abuse.  SDY (talk) 15:49, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

After reading the arguments here, I think I agree with keeping the two terms separate, per Biophys and and Cs32. I also agree that there is no need to rename articles en masse (although possibly some of them may need renaming if they are about legit human subject research, not unethical experimentation). I think that the logical article/category structure would have human experimentation a subcategory/subarticle to human subject research (and also a subcat to human right violations, which human subject research articles should not a subcat of). I certainly agree that not all hsr violates human rights, so we cannot subcategorize hsr to that category, as it would misclassify a lot of ethical, safe experiments. Bottom line is: either we agree on using only one name (he or hsr) for all related articles and categories, or we agree on using two. If we cannot reach a consensus via discussion soon, how about a straw poll to see where we stand (and I'd also suggest a wider WP:RFC to attract more eyes). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 17:26, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * In fact, human experimentation is frequently used as a neutral term, like here. I do not really see any POV problems with current names and categories which would warrant such discussion and votes. Let's do something more important.Biophys (talk) 18:38, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Nuremberg figures mismatch
Can someone please check the the figures for the Nuremberg Trials (Main Heading "History of human subjects abuses") It says that "Out of those 23, 15 were convicted ...and 7 were acquitted." This adds up to 22. AFAIK, 16 were convicted. Kmasters0 (talk) 08:03, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Personal Experience
The United States also lent assistance,or was the aegis (Operation Paperclip?), for experiments on small children. I was four, in a Palo Alto kindergarten class, when three men came looking for another boy in my class. He was the son of a test pilot at Moffett Federal airbase, where presumably the plane dropping the anthrax-substitute on San Francisco, flew out of; about forty-miles south of that city.

I was taken instead of him at the insistence of one of his admirers, the lead girl of a tightly-knit group of children. Later, when I recovered enough to return to school, he enlisted me to have a fake birthday party at my parents' home, where "a man from the base" came and took away the four invitees, including the girl. The three girls were injected with a growth-stunting substance, and never grew taller than about three feet. This experimenter settled in Hawthorne, Fl (the New Hawthorne between Rte 441 and Gordon Chapel road) and made dozens or hundreds of tiny people; not really midgets, for sale to circuses, using children abducted from all over the United States. My injection was an innoculation with a dangerous contagious disease. I sickened, but when the men tried to pick me up from my home while my father was at work, my mother defended us (my baby brother and myself), and prevented the event. Later, I would directly infect hundreds or thousands of people, including persons I worked for as a landscaper and children I made tiger tails for.

When I could no longer avoid the fact that I was spreading this slow-to-emerge, nearly undetectable disease (symptoms may not develop for ten years, or more, but can develop in as little as two months), I brought the matter to the Government's attention in a claim against the DoD and the DoJ. This was ignored, and then my FTCA claim was tossed out of the Federal District Court in Trenton, NJ without the benefit of a hearing, discovery, amended complaint or anything other rights or due process that ordinary people mistakenly believe are protected by our Constitution and law.

I believe that many thousands of people may now be infected, and of these perhaps half will eventually show symptoms. However, the symptoms that may develop are horrible in the extreme; namely, facial disfigurement caused by the death of skin pores, a kind of black acne that can totally blacken the skin; hydropsy, or swelling caused by kidney failure, and a bizarre symptom that has come to be known as evaporation in Princeton. Evaporation is the troubling, but not necessarily fatal, disappearance of an individual, or group of individuals, into thin air. I and others have watched this happen repeatedly since two months after the injection, and have experienced it myself, though not with fatal consequences.

I suspect the pathogenic microbe is a member of the spirochetic family, possibly a Leptospire, and was chosen for study because it sporulates, or granulates, as Naguchi, the famous spirotologist claimed happened under certain conditions. I spread the disease (I show no symptoms, myself) through sweating, one way of shedding "spires," as they are called. My garden produce is so tainted, as well as the soil where I have exerted myself heavily.

I have most recently contacted the President's Commission on Scientific Ethics, as everyone else; the CDC in Atlanta, and the National Institutes of Health in Maryland, the Army's Lab at Fort Dietrich, and New Jersey State authorities have all shied away from my case. Our Governor, Gov. Christie, was the head of the DoJ office that fielded my complaint when and where his office dealt with it, by the way.

I would be happy to talk to a reporter at length concerning my case.

Sincerely yours,

John Sebastian deGrazia —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.149.255.225 (talk) 19:27, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Personal experience is not a reason or reliable source to adjust the page. I've redacted your e-mail, it's never a good idea to put a plain text version on a talk page.  WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 01:34, 2 June 2011 (UTC)