SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A California medical school has apologized for conducting dozens of unethical medical experiments on at least 2,600 incarcerated men in the 1960s and 1970s, including applying pesticides and herbicides to the men’s skin and intravenous injection.
Two dermatologists from the University of California, San Francisco, one of whom remains at the university, performed the experiments on the men at the California Medical Facility, a prison hospital in Vacaville located about 50 miles (80.47 kilometers) north. San Francisco. The practice was discontinued in 1977.
The university’s Historical Reconciliation Program released a report on the experiments earlier this month, writing that doctors engaged in “questionable informed consent practices” and performed procedures on men who did not have any of the diseases or conditions being researched and they proposed to cure them. The San Francisco Chronicle first reported the results of the program on Wednesday.
“UCSF apologizes for its explicit role in harming individuals, their families, and our community by facilitating this research, and acknowledges the institution’s implicit role in perpetuating the unethical treatment of vulnerable and disadvantaged populations, regardless of the legal or perceptual standards of the time,” he said. he said. . Executive Vice Chancellor and Chancellor Dan Lowenstein said in a statement.
The report says more analysis is needed to determine the extent of harm caused to prisoners as a result of the experiments and what the university should do in response.
“We are still in the process of considering the recommendations and determining appropriate next steps,” the university said in a statement Thursday. “If we do, we will do so with humility and an unwavering commitment to a more just, fair and ethical future.”
A spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Dana Simas, said officials have not yet read the report. However, the agency and California Correctional Health Care Services “strive to ensure that the incarcerated population receives appropriate health care that meets community standards of care and ethics,” Simas wrote.
The report focused on the research of Dr. Howard Maibach and Dr. William Epstein. Maibach continues to work at the university, and Epstein died in 2006. It was not immediately clear whether Maibach would face discipline in light of the report.
The experiments involved giving incarcerated men doses of pesticides and herbicides, who volunteered for the studies and were paid $30 a month for their participation — among the prison’s highest-paid and most sought-after roles, according to an article in 1977 from university student magazine. , Synapse.
Other experiments included placing small mosquito cages next to participants’ arms or directly on their skin to determine the “attractiveness of the human host to mosquitoes,” the report said.
The research ended in 1977 when California banned human subjects research in state prisons, a year after the federal government halted the practice.
But in 1977, Epstein testified at state hearings in support of biomedical experiments in prisons, the report said, and investigators could find no evidence that he changed his mind before he died.
While Maibach wrote that he regretted participating in research that did not meet current standards in a letter to the university’s dermatology department, he said he believed the experiments provided benefits for some of the patients.
“What we thought was normally ethical forty or fifty years ago is not considered ethical today,” he wrote. “I don’t recall the studies causing any medical harm to the participants.”
The university says there is no evidence the doctors’ research was specifically directed at black men, even though they were trained by a now-deceased Philadelphia doctor whose research in a Pennsylvania prison was unethical and lacked of respect to the subjects, many of whom were black. men.
The report also found that many of Maibach’s publications throughout his career perpetuate the biologization of race — which he addressed in his letter by saying that he now “has come to understand that race has always been a social construct rather than a biological one, something unappreciated. of so many of us in a bygone age’.
“While one of your recent papers (by Maibach) suggests a possible reconsideration of the biology of race, we believe that your long history of researching skin differences along racial lines, with race as a possible biological factor, has perpetuated ongoing racial science. in dermatology and has yet to be addressed publicly,” the report said.
Maibach’s son, Edward Maibach, wrote in an email to The Associated Press on Thursday that his father suffered a stroke last week and was unable to answer questions from the media.
The younger Maibach said his father was not allowed to meet with the report’s authors or access their documents. The report and a university press release, he wrote, treated his father “as a ‘lone hoarder’ who acted without the knowledge or approval of others at UCSF.” And this is incorrect.
“Dr. Maibach’s activities at Vacaville were known to and approved by UCSF administrators, including the UCSF ethicist,” Edward Maibach wrote.
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