http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/323/7312/531
|
||||||||
|
|
News
Johns Hopkins faces further criticism over experiments
Deborah Josefson
The Johns Hopkins University Medical Center, in Baltimore, Maryland, is
facing fresh criticism over its research methods and ethics
this time in relation to a study of different
ways of getting rid of lead paint in homes, during which children
were knowingly exposed to high levels of lead.
The centre temporarily lost its licence for research on humans recently
after a previously healthy woman died in an asthma study
(28 July, p 186).
Now two families have won the right to pursue a court case against the
Kennedy Krieger Institute, which is affiliated to the Johns Hopkins
University Medical Center, claiming that in the study it allowed
their children to sustain lead poisoning and brain damage by failing
to inform them that they lived in housing with dangerous levels of
lead dust. The Kennedy Krieger Institute, located on the
university's campus, is nationally recognised in the field of lead
poisoning and childhood neurological disorders.
The study, which ran from 1993 to 1995, was conducted in
100 homes contaminated with lead paint. In Baltimore city more than 100000 homes
have lead paint and over 4000 children annually test positive
for raised serum lead levels.
The aim of the study was to find a cheaper and less hazardous way of
removing lead paint than stripping the paint off the walls. The work
was funded largely by a government grant.
Landlords were paid from $1650 (£1178) to $7000 to partially remove lead by
scraping off peeling paint, to paint over existing paint, or to add
coverings. Residents were allowed, and in some cases encouraged, to
remain in their homes while these removal techniques were going on.
Lead levels of children living in the homes were periodically tested
to monitor the efficiency of the various techniques.
Maryland Court of Appeal ruled 7 to 1 to allow the lawsuit to move
forward, using the occasion to tighten safety precautions in
research involving children and to restrict such research further. They
also criticised Johns Hopkins' institutional review board for
allowing the study to proceed.
Judge Dale Cathell compared the Kennedy Krieger study to Nazi experiments on
concentration camp victims and to the Tuskegee experiment, in which
syphilis in black men with the disease was allowed to progress
(rather than be treated with penicillin) so that the natural course
of syphilis infection could be studied
The appeal court's indictment of the Kennedy Krieger study has also resulted
in an investigation into the study by the Department of Health and
Human Services' Office of Human Research Protections.
But Don Ryan, executive director of the Alliance to End Childhood Lead
Poisoning, in an article in the Baltimore Sun newspaper (2001;
28 August) defended the lead research, saying: "The reality is
that this research made homes safer, not only for the children in
Baltimore but for hundreds of thousands of others across the nation.
Children do not live in lead-burdened houses because researchers want
to `experiment' on them but because so much of our housing is
contaminated by lead."
© BMJ 2001
ALL
INFORMATION, DATA, AND MATERIAL CONTAINED, PRESENTED, OR PROVIDED HERE IS FOR
GENERAL INFORMATION PURPOSES ONLY AND IS NOT TO BE CONSTRUED AS REFLECTING THE
KNOWLEDGE OR OPINIONS OF THE PUBLISHER, AND IS NOT TO BE CONSTRUED OR INTENDED
AS PROVIDING MEDICAL OR LEGAL ADVICE. THE DECISION WHETHER OR NOT TO
VACCINATE IS AN IMPORTANT AND COMPLEX ISSUE AND SHOULD BE MADE BY YOU, AND YOU
ALONE, IN CONSULTATION WITH YOUR HEALTH CARE PROVIDER.