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Nuremberg Medical Trial

One of Andrew Conway Ivy’s biggest impact on medical society was his differentiation of human experimentation from unethical medical war crimes that the Nazi’s conducted on American prisoners of war. This definition was used to justify continued medical research on prisoners, including testing the efficacy of new drugs and studying chemical warfare agents [1]. Yet, according the German defendants during the Nuremberg trials, the difference between this testing on prisoners and the tests that the Nazi’s conducted on humans, such as vaccine tests and survival in hazardous conditions, were minimal and that there was not an international law that dictated the difference between legal and illegal human experimentation [3]. As a result, Ivy, then the vice president of the University of Illinois in Chicago, was appointed by the AMA as part of a committee to determine the ethical considerations to be incorporated into medical research [2]. The result of this committee was the Green Report which played a huge role in justifying medical research on prisoners for decades to come.

However, the creation of this report itself is shrouded with corruption as, while Ivy was supposed to speak on behalf of the committee, he instead used this platform to advance his own views on medical research without consulting the committee. In the Green report, which Ivy stated was written by the committee when it in fact was solely written by him, he differentiated the medical prison research in the U.S. from the torture and murder charges of Nazis. He claimed that in the U.S. prison research, there were attempts at obtaining consent and that none of the experiments in the U.S. were meant to result in death of the subjects [2]. However, these views were heavily influenced by Ivy’s own biases and desires as a medical researcher. As a researcher in making seawater drinkable, he wanted to reduce regulations by establishing a loose ethical framework so that he could conduct the experiments he wanted [3]. The effects of these laws were to create a justification for medical prison research that wouldn’t be overturned for decades and prevented American medicine from discussing ethics of medical experimentation [2]. In his own practice, Ivy believed that he could not give patients treatments that he would not do himself. As such, he was known for being the first subject of the experiment as a guide to other subjects. This earned him a lot of praise from the medical society and it earned him a position on the Committee on Aviation Medicine of the National Research Council.

The Krebiozen Story

While considered the foremost medical professional during the time of the Nuremberg trials, later on his life, he would come to be shamed for his support of a drug called Krebiozen. [4] Originally created by Yugoslavian refugee doctors named Stevan Durovic, the drug was derived from the blood of horses that had been given growth factors and was meant to treat cancer [4]. In fact, Durovic told Ivy that his drug had cleared 7/12 dogs of cancer within 6 months and the remaining 5 showed great improvement. Ivy accepted the drug at Durovic’s word and began testing on humans in within the next month. Within a year and a half, Ivy shared characterized the results from his experiment as a “dramatic clinical improvement”. Yet, during the press conference, though 10 of the 22 patients died, Ivy did not post that these patients had died of cancer. Instead, he posted that they had different causes of death. The medical community immediately began trying to recreate these results with no success. Yet, instead of rescinding his results, Ivy claimed that the AMA and the American Cancer Society were trying to prevent distribution of their drug to the market. As a result, Kreboizen was continued to be given to patients grasping at any last straws of life. In fact in 1962, the foundation founded by Ivy, published results stating that 3,300 physicians used Kreboizen to treat 4,227 patients. Ivy could not carry the lie of the efficacy of his drug forever though. In February of 1959, Dr. Ivy began a research record of a patient name Mr. Taietti who had bladder cancer. Dr. Ivy reported that the patient had been showing improvement and that the bladder tumor had decreased in size. However, upon investigation by the FDA, it was found that the patient had died of bladder cancer in 1955. This falsification of information and intentional deception resulted in Ivy being charged with fraud. However in 1965, Ivy was found not guilty and he then severed his ties with Mr. Stevan Durovic.

1. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/should-prisoners-be-used-in-medical-experiments/

2. http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/1996/12/historian-examines-us-ethics-nuremberg-medical-trial-tactics

3. https://www.ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/online-exhibitions/special-focus/doctors-trial/nuremberg-code

4. https://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Cancer/krebiozen.html