Human Hepatitis Experiments in the United States, 1942-1972

描述（由申请人提供）： 在1942年至1972年的30年里，美国医学研究人员进行了一系列实验，他们故意让人类受试者感染肝炎。研制病毒性肝炎动物模型的尝试一再失败，科学家们只好求助于人体实验来增进对这种疾病和致病病毒株的了解，他们的实验对象总共有几千人，包括囚犯、拒服兵役者、精神病人和被收容的儿童。联邦政府主要通过陆军流行病学委员会（AEB）--1949年成为武装部队流行病学委员会（AFEB）--赞助了这些研究。管理潜在受试者的机构积极合作招募研究参与者。这包括，在出于良心拒服兵役者的情况下，选择性服务系统和历史性和平教会联盟，在第二次世界大战期间，管理平民公共服务（CPS）营地。在20世纪40年代和50年代，很少有人认为这些实验在道德上是不可接受的。但是，到20世纪60年代中期，支持这些和其他危险医学实验的气候发生了巨大变化。肝炎研究在20世纪70年代初结束，因为科学家和他们的赞助商面临着一个新建立的监管体系和对人类研究的截然不同的敏感性。 这个项目探讨了人类肝炎实验的进行，以及在美国首先启用然后减少疾病造成的人类研究的社会条件和道德建设。它利用了异常丰富和以前未经审查的档案记录。这些文件使我能够详细研究科学家的行为和动机，他们的主题，以及使人体实验成为可能的机构领导人。该项目的这本书将阐明社会行动者网络如何协商对人类受试者的风险水平是合理的。它将提供生动的文献，说明历史事件和文化背景的变化如何影响对构成可接受的人类研究的评估。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): In the three decades between 1942 and 1972, American medical researchers conducted a series of experiments in which they deliberately infected human subjects with hepatitis. Attempts to develop animal models of viral hepatitis repeatedly failed and scientists resorted to human experiments to advance knowledge about the disease and the viral strains causing it. Their subjects-several thousand in all--were prison inmates, conscientious objectors, mental patients and institutionalized children. The federal government sponsored the studies, largely through the Army Epidemiology Board (AEB)-which become the Armed Forces Epidemiology Board (AFEB) in 1949. Institutions that managed prospective subjects actively cooperated in recruiting research participants. This included, in the case of conscientious objectors, both the Selective Service System and the coalition of historic peace churches that, during World War II, ran Civilian Public Service (CPS) camps. During the 1940s and 1950s, few argued that the experiments were morally unacceptable. But the climate supporting these and other hazardous medical experiments changed dramatically by the mid- 1960s. The hepatitis studies ended in the early 1970s as scientists and their sponsors confronted a newly established regulatory system and dramatically different sensibilities about human research. This project explores the conduct of the human hepatitis experiments and the social conditions and moral constructions that first enabled and then curtailed disease- inflicting human research in America. It draws on unusually rich and previously unexamined archival records. These documents allow me to examine in detail the actions and motivations of scientists, their subjects, and institutional leaders who made human experimentation possible. The book from the project will clarify how networks of social actors negotiate what levels of risk to human subjects are justifiable. It will provide vivid documentation of how historical events and shifts in the cultural context impinged on assessments of what constitutes acceptable human research.