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Many Scientific Experts Condemn Ethics of Cancer Injection (1964)
- dekhn 8y agoI was curious what happened to the doctor in question: he got off light. Today, if you did unconsented studies like this and it got out, you'd likely be fired and it would be national news. From the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, Southam conducted clinical research on people without their informed consent, in which he injected cancer cells (HeLa cells) into their skin, to see if their immune system would reject the cancer cells or if the cells would grow. He did this to patients under his care or others' care, and to prisoners.[3][4] In 1963, doctors Avir Kagan, David Leichter and Perry Fersko of Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital objected to the lack of consent in his experiments and reported him to the Regents of the University of the State of New York which found him guilty of fraud, deceit, and unprofessional conduct, and in the end he was placed on probation for a year.[3][4] Southam's research was conducted in an era when cancer research was closely followed in the mainstream media; his experiments and the case at the Regents were reported in The New York Times.[5][6][7][8][9]