03 Oct Apologizing to Guatemala — and Perjury at Nuremberg
Obama apologized on Friday for experiments conducted in Guatemala between 1946 and 1948 in which American scientists deliberately infected prison inmates, prostitutes, and mental patients with syphilis without their consent. The apology is a striking reminder that the Nazis were not the only ones that conducted horrific, non-consensual medical experiments on human subjects in the first half of the 20th century (although, to be sure, the Nazi experiments were vastly more brutal than any conducted by American scientists). Indeed, America’s own sordid history of medical experimentation led to the worst example of perjured testimony during the Nuremberg Military Tribunals. From Chapter Four of my book:
The misconduct involved Andrew Ivy, the head of the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Medical College, who was the prosecution’s star expert witness at trial. Prior to his testimony, he was present during the cross-examination of another prosecution witness, Walter Leibrandt, a professor of medical history at the University of Erlangen, who had testified that experimentation on humans was unethical even if the subjects consented and the experiments had medical value. On cross, Leibrandt admitted that the standard he endorsed condemned not only the defendants’ experiments, but also American malaria experiments conducted on inmates at Stateville Prison in Illinois during the war. Concerned by Leibrandt’s testimony, Ivy decided to defend the Stateville experiments by testifying that they had been overseen and approved by a public ethics committee. No such committee had existed, however, much less one that approved the experiments.
Undaunted, Ivy returned to the United States and convinced the Governor of Illinois, Dwight Green, to form an ad hoc committee – the Green Committee – to advise him on the ethics of medical experimentation on human subjects. Ivy did not tell the Governor that he intended to testify when he returned to Nuremberg, the committee never met, and the committee’s “report” was authored by Ivy himself. Ivy nevertheless not only claimed at the Medical trial that the Green Committee had approved the Stateville experiments, he responded to a defense question about whether “the formation of the committee had anything to do with the fact that this trial is going on” by testifying that “there is no connection between the action of this committee and this trial.” It is unlikely that the prosecution was aware of the true facts – but it is beyond question that Ivy blatantly perjured himself.
In an interesting move, the Medical tribunal permitted two defendants in the case, Ruff and Rose, to personally cross-examine Ivy. Rose’s questioning was extremely effective — so effective, in fact, that the judges suddenly decided to limit him to 30 minutes of cross-examination!
That’s just a snippet from the book. If you want to learn more, you’ll just have to buy it…
I look forward to your book. Incidentally–or not–clinical trials with human subjects remains a rather sordid business, literally: “Over the past 20 years or so, without much fanfare, clinical research has undergone a remarkable free-market conversion. Until the early 1990s, most pharmaceutical research on human subjects was conducted by physicians in universities and teaching hospitals. (The FDA, which must approve drugs before they can be marketed, doesn’t conduct clinical trials itself.) However, pharmaceutical companies have been in search of cheaper, more efficient venues and today about 70 per cent of clinical trials take place in the private sector, often in the offices of private physicians or at dedicated sites. Clinical research has become a multibillion-dollar global industry, spawning spin-off businesses that barely existed 25 years ago, from patient recruitment firms and medical communication agencies to for-profit research ethics boards.” As to the sordid part: “It is striking just how little is known about the new clinical trials industry. Partly this is because it is so widely dispersed. Back in the old days, if you worked in a medical school or teaching hospital, you could often get a feel for a clinical trial simply by walking down the hall. Now you… Read more »
Sounds fascinating. Maybe you could elaborate on it more in a speech…
Medical testing without consent is precisely the type of outrageous misconduct found to be a violation of international law by the Second Circuit in Pfizer. In the Pfizer case, the court found Pfizer had violated int’l law (by testing its experimental anti-meningititis drug, Trovan, on Nigerian children) and could be brought to trial under the ATCA for the resultant injuries. Of course, after Kiobel, which held corps cannot be liable under int’l law and thus not liable under the ATCA, this type of abuse of non US citizens can be done with impunity – violate int’l law and get a free pass if you are a corp defendant.
In the Pfizer case, the court found Pfizer had violated int’l law (by testing its experimental anti-meningititis drug, Trovan, on Nigerian children) and could be brought to trial under the ATCA for the resultant injuries.
I was under the impression there was never a ruling on the merits of that case…
Check the Second Circuit ruling. 562 F.3d 163 (2d Cir. 2009). Also, Pfizer’s cert request was denied earlier this year.
On review of a district court’s grant of a motion to dismiss, we assume as true the facts alleged in the complaints, construing them in the light most favorable to the appellants.
I don’t think that’s a consideration on the merits.
Read the opinion instead of taking a couple of snippets from the outset. And by the way, its standard procedure for U.S. appellate courts to “assume the truth” for purposes of the motion in other words they construe the facts in the light most favorable to the opposing party (here the plaintiffs who were opposing Pfizer’s motion at the dist ct). In other words the 2d Cir assumed that Pfizer really did the things alleged – they are not saying it really happened (has to be proven via admissible evidence at trial). The appellate ct does not require pls to actually prove the facts at this stage. If you take the time to read the opinion it clearly goes through the conventions and CIL on medical testing. The ct says there is a colorable claim under the ATCA – medical testing without consent violates CIL.
Why is it that we always have to compare guilt back to the Nazis? I am sorry, but the sentence “although, to be sure, the Nazi experiments were vastly more brutal than any conducted by American scientists” seems ill placed. The inhumanity of some Nazi experiments defies the imagination. But American scientists making syphilis-infected prostitutes sleep with mental patients and prison inmates, inflicting abrasions to “improve” contagion and ultimately in some cases puncturing their spines to deliver the disease are precisely like Nazi scientists doing the same thing. The fact that some Nazi scientists did worse is besides the point (so that is the standard we are comparing American science with these days?).