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年间，美国医学研究人员进行了一系列实验，故意将肝炎传染给人类。建立病毒性肝炎动物模型的尝试一再失败，科学家们求助于人体实验来增进对这种疾病和导致这种疾病的病毒株的了解。他们的对象--总共有数千人--是监狱囚犯、依良心拒服兵役的人、精神病患者和收容机构的儿童。联邦政府赞助了这些研究，主要是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)。管理未来受试者的机构积极合作，招募研究参与者。在依良心拒服兵役者的情况下，这包括选择性服务制度和历史悠久的和平教会联盟，后者在第二次世界大战期间经营平民公共服务营地。在20世纪40年代和50年代，几乎没有人认为这些实验在道德上是不可接受的。但到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戏剧性的变化。肝炎研究在20世纪70年代初结束，当时科学家及其赞助商面临着一个新建立的监管系统，以及对人类研究的截然不同的看法。 这个项目探索了人类肝炎实验的进行以及社会条件和道德建设，这些条件和道德建设首先在美国启用了导致疾病的人类研究，然后又限制了这一研究。它利用了异常丰富的、以前未经审查的档案记录。这些文件让我能够详细研究科学家、他们的受试者和使人体实验成为可能的机构领导人的行动和动机。该项目的这本书将阐明社会参与者网络如何协商对人类受试者的风险水平是合理的。它将生动地记录历史事件和文化背景的变化如何影响对什么是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.