Student Work on Science & Marginalized Peoples

During World War Two, a secret research academy, soon to be named Unit 731, was assembled in central Tokyo. Its aim was to perfect biological warfare and test human limitations. Lieutenant Shiro Ishii was soon appointed head of the research projects. An estimated 3,000 prisoners of war were used as human test subjects for the various experiments that were carried out (“Japan’s Biological Warfare Project”, 2020). This includes a known amount of 1,300 Americans and 371 British, Australian and Dutch soldiers, along with many more that are unaccounted for (Pawlowicz, et al. 2015). The scientists and Japanese soldiers at Unit 731 made the research academy appear to be a lumber mill. This allowed them to stay out of the public eye. They also called their prisoners “Maruta”, meanings “log” instead of human. This allowed them to be reminded that these prisoners of war were not human to them, but only test subjects and it also was thought to be funny, since they were pretending to be a lumber mill (Guillemin, 2017).

The prisoners at Unit 731 endured many horrific experiments. To begin, some of the prisoners would be forced to sit outside in the snow until they got frostbite on their limbs. The doctors would then bring them in and give them various experimental “treatments” to cure their frostbite. When this didn’t work, the doctors would often cut off the infected limbs without anesthetic and leave them to die (Pawlowicz, et al. 2015). Next, many of the prisoners were used as test subjects for the “plague-flea bomb”. The Japanese soldiers would tie the prisoners to a post and then would release a bomb that was filled with fleas that had been infected with the plague. Once the bomb would drop, the fleas would be released and infect anyone in the area with the plague (Guillemin, 2017). Once the prisoners would become infected, they often underwent vivisections without any anesthetic. The Japanese would then keep their organs in jars, so that they could keep studying them. Along the same lines, prisoners were given injections to purposely infect them with the plague, anthrax, and cholera. The doctors would then test various vaccines on them, and when they didn’t work the prisoners would be left to die a painful death. Lastly, some of the prisoners were locked in pressure chambers to see how much pressure a human could withstand before their eyes would pop out (“Japan’s Biological Warfare Project”, 2020).

After the United States dropped the two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was eminent that Japan was going to lose the war. The Japanese soldiers shot the rest of the prisoners at Unit 731, leaving no survivors, and then burned down their headquarters (“Japan’s Biological Warfare Project”, 2020). Once the United States realized what was happening at Unit 731, they decided to impose secrecy on the matter. They made a deal with the scientists and soldiers at Unit 731 and granted them immunity in return for the data of the experiments (Pawlowicz, et al. 2015). None of the scientists or soldiers were ever punished for the crimes they committed at Unit 731. Many of the criminals from Unit 731 went on to have successful, high profile lives. For instance, the head of the vivisections, Yoshisuke Murata, became head of Kyoto University medical school and then director of Kinki University. A family who had been affected by Unit 731 sued the Japanese government demanding an apology, compensation, and full disclosure of the research activities. The Tokyo High Court denied their request (“Japan’s Biological Warfare Project”, 2020). As of today, the victims of Unit 731 have received no apology, compensation, recognition, or justice from any government body.

In this situation, in 1944, MIT researchers and Harvard University conducted a study on boys aged 10-17 in order to study the digestive system. They decided to feed the boys oatmeal, that included radioactive tracers. These kids were at a state school for the mentally disabled and orphans, which is where the ethical issues come in at. For the kids who had parents, letters were sent home and notified of the study, but they did not make the parents aware of the involvement of the radioactive tracers. For years, the boys were exposed to 544 to 1,024 millirems, which is more than what normal Americans were exposed to in a year from natural resources. The boys never knew what was really going on and didn’t find out until years later. One of the boys, Fred Boyce, recalled his time at the school and said they forced them to do manual labor and even abused them. Decades after the study was done, the National Research Act of 1974 was created, which was created to protect Americans from unethical experiments. When the lawsuit first started, the argument for the boys case is that these scientist used the most vulnerable people in society without their consent and for the ones who had parents, they gave consent without knowing all of the information. The argument against the boys case was that there wasn’t a harmful amount of radioactive tracers in the oatmeal. In that aspect, the jury ruled in favor of the scientists, agreeing the boys health did not suffer from the study. In the end, the boys won a settlement of $1.85 million because the jury ruled that the scientists didn’t inform the parents of all information in the study, making them unaware of the dangers their kid were in. Furthermore, President Clinton apologized for indirectly funding the study. The part that is interesting is that all of this happened in what is referred to as Dawn on the Atomic Age and at this time, consent was a standard procedure.

Study 329 was a study funded by the British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline. Its goal was to compare two anti-depressant medications, their drug paroxetine and the common treatment at the time, imipramine. It was conducted from 1994 to 1998; and its goal was to compare how effective these drugs were in treating people aged 12-18 who were suffering from major depressive disorder. At first mention, this does not sound like it was such a bad experiment at all. However, the biggest problems arose after this study. People who were taking paroxetine (branded Paxil in the US) reported that they had an increase in potential harms while on this drug. This study was officially published in 2001, and in 2003 another team of independent researchers from the MHRA looked into the study and the information that was discovered. It was discovered that the study actually failed to show that paroxetine had a substantial effect on major depressive disorder; in fact, they actually found the opposite. People who were taking these medications had an increase in harms such as suicidal ideation, while people who took imipramine showed an increase in cardiovascular problems. For some people, the medication had such a negative impact on their lives that they had to drop out of the study all together, however, these were also not reported in the originally published study. Instead these people who had to drop out due to negative effects essentially had their data thrown out and not used in the results. There have been a number of different lawsuits across different countries since the revisiting of this study in 2003. Due to all of this backlash, GlaxoSmithKline began trying to right the wrong that they had done. They began to publish all of the data and research that they discovered during their trials. This transparency was something that, at the time, had never been seen. Since then, GSK has lead the way in providing the public more transparency when it comes to studies such as this. Especially ones that are done on humans and people who are under the age of 18.

On October 7, 2014, the groundbreaking ceremony was held for the 30 Meter Telescope (TMT), which was interrupted by native Hawai’ian protestors (Honolulu). The building of the TMT became the focus of what had, until that point, been mounting tension between the people who traced their heredity to the founding of the island country by way of the Polynesians and what they see as the imperialistic tendencies of the invading United States government (Clery). You see, ever since James Cook discovered the Hawai’ian islands in 1778, white men have been exploiting the native peoples, much as they have done everywhere they have gone in the past seven centuries. Cook took a number of Hawai’ian men and women back to England with him, to display them like carnival sideshow attractions to the other rich white people back home. Not only did Cook attempt to overthrow the ruler of Hawai’i because he believed the monarch to have stolen a small ship, he also noticed the extreme lushness and material richness of the islands for what they were worth as a resource depot in the middle of the barren ocean. Following Cook’s example, Protestant missionaries came to the islands, setting up plantations to grow sugar, which required slave labor (History). It was obviously up to the Hawai’ians to fill the role of slave, since they weren’t white. Many Asian men came to work on the plantations as well, and a significant portion of the islands’ population was of Asian descent by end of the 1800’s. Smallpox wiped out nearly all of the remaining native Hawai’ians by 1920, when only about twenty-four thousand remained in total. In 1893, the last queen of Hawai’i attempted to wrest all the power away from the wealthy plantation owners, however with the help of the U.S. government, they overpowered her, gaining control of the islands themselves (sound familiar?). Eventually the puppet government agreed to join the United States, becoming the state of Hawai’i in 1959 (History). This gave the U.S. government the power to build military bases, take land, and all around just abuse the people of Hawai’i even further. Since the before Hawai’i even became a state, it has been a tourist attraction to Americans, with about nine and a half million people visiting from around the world annually which has had an impact on the environment and national identity of Hawai’i as a whole (Schmidt).

Considering all of these trespasses on the Hawai’ian people, that have occurred for over 130 years, it is no wonder that after having been lied to time after time by white men, the people of Hawai’i have finally decided to take a stand against what they see as another transgression in the form of the TMT. I certainly do not blame them, and I believe they should exercise every ability the have to attempt to attain some form of retribution, but as an aspiring astro-biologist I would very much like to see the telescope built so as to further my own field of interest. Perhaps some level of compromise can be reached in the near future.

During a period of time between 1950 and 1960, unethical experiments occurred at the Sonoma State Hospital in California, now known as Sonoma Developmental Center. During these years, many citizens were unaware of how to care for their loved ones with developmental diseases like down syndrome, cerebral palsy and autism, among others. Many parents turned to the center for help, families were admitting their kids into this institution for special care, but what was really going on behind those walls was hidden from them. Government was sponsoring radioactive experimentation and research and institutions like Sonoma Developmental Hospital needed money, it was also the perfect place for research. It was seen as a control environment with enough ‘subjects’ to experiment on, the institution applied for funding from the government with this in mind, stating they could provide a certain amount of subjects. Once granted the money, the institution got to recruiting and accepting many disabeled children. Unfortunately for these kids, many of them were left there and very little to no visiting from parents occurred, they were just forgotten. Of those families that did visit frequently, their visitation rights soon became restricted and later taken away. Once these patients were isolated from their families and left for the institution's use, they were inhumanely experimented on. Many patients with cerebral palsy were put through rigorous spinal aps, with no pain killers. During the spinal taps, “doctors” would extract spinal fluid out and insert air into the spine. This process was done to explore the idea of perhaps getting rid of cerebral palsy or alleviate the pain and symptoms of it. However, it causes more pain than not, giving children massive headaches, horrible fevers, and more complications than they already had. When patients would experience these side effects, they were not taken care of and simply were utilized for something else. Once the children died of complications, families were notified. Those who still cared enough asked questions as to how their child had passed, but very little information was given to them. Determined family members of one of the children who experimented on demanded answers and did her own research, only to find out her little brother, Mark, had died of complications relating to the experimentation done on cerebral palsy patients. Mark passed away from high fevers which eventually led to a massive seizure that killed him. After many years, in 2005, she went back to the hospital in search of answers, but the hospital had conveniently no records of any experimentation ever done there. She was given her brother’s death certificate, where she found two autopsies were done on Mark’s body, one on his actual body and one on his brain. This is where she learned after these kids died, their brains were removed and saved for further research, without informed consent of the family.

At the end of the experiments, researches had no clear data and the results did not shed light on anything. Aside from the experimentation on cerebral palsy patients, other disabled children were experimented on with radioactive materials.

These experiments “the radiation experiments” were done so in order to aid the government in their knowledge of how a person would be affected by exposure to radioactive materials. Children were injected with harmful materials such as Plutonium, which can cause cancer and death, in order to see how long the chemical will stay in the body. Other kids were exposed to high radiation, harmful enough to cause burns, cancer and other diseases. These two experiments were paid by the U.S. Government. At the time, they were working on building atomic bombs and the government wanted to know how their scientists would be affected by their exposure to these highly radioactive chemicals. Once the experiments came to light and the public were aware of what was happening in the institution, President Clinton took full responsibility for the experimentation, though he gave no explanation. He presented a public apology for the victims and their families and in order to fix the wrong doing, they granted families pay for their loved ones place in the “research”. Though not everyone got compensation, as records of what was being done were not kept properly, of the 3,500 files, only 50 of them were found. After this, new regulations on human experimentation were passed, where informed consent is necessary and no inhumane experiments were to be done. Innocent children suffered and were wrongfully experimented on in order for new human research regulations to be passed. These children are still being hidden from the public, as information on the experiments at Sonoma State Hospital is hard to find and files on it are even harder to access.

Background

· Occurred in Bowery, New York

o Homeless section referred to as Skid Row

· The Head doctor was Perry Hudson, a recent graduate of Columbia University and trained at John-Hopkins

· Dr. Hudson was trying to prove that Prostate cancer could be caught early and cured

· Aronowitz 2014

Exploited Peoples

· The subjects were homeless men

o Ended up recruiting over 1200

§ Around 200 were found with abnormalities and were subjected to surgeries and testing

o Most of the homeless men were often alcoholics

o Kolata 2013

· They were offered beds, showers and 3 meals a day if they agreed to participate in Hudson’s study.

o Many were left in the dark and had no idea what they were signing up for

o No moves were made to enlighten them, they had no idea of the risks (rectal tears, impotence, removal of prostates and testicles if cancer cells were found)

o Kolata 2013

Experimentation

· Men were ordered to shower and after they got out, they underwent an extensive physical examination which included

o prostatic massages, urine and blood analysis; x-rays of the abdomen; intravenous pyelograms; and cystoscopy (Aronowitz)

· If they were found to have a lump or obstruction, they were allowed to stay and in the following days they had a prostate biopsy without anesthesia (Baillie).

o Keep in mind- back then it wasn’t just a needle and a simple prick. Hudson made a surgical incision between the rectum and testes to then cut off a piece of the prostate. (Aronowitz)

· If cancer was found in their biopsy Hudson would then go with his aggressive form of treatment, believing (not having proof) that it would increase their lifespan and cure them of cancer.

o Remove the whole prostate, most likely both testes and put the men on synthetic estrogen

o This type of treatment was far from the standard at the time

Cover Up

· Hudson did get a good chunk of his funding from the NIH, but they failed to cite ethical issues or to stop the study which went on for a little over a decade (Aronowitz)

· The results he did publish were incomplete. He had no control group and left out the complications from his procedures (Aronowitz).

· He was cited in urologist journals AND textbooks during the time of his studies (Kolata)

· QUOTE FROM INTERVIEW

· “Oh yeah. You know these people, the ones who are persistent street people in New York, are not simple minded. They are alcoholics. They have mental disease very often. But (it) doesn’t appear when they are listening to a conversation or answering a question. They understood everything that was going on.”

Overall, these men were poor and hopeless. They were pressured to volunteer and told of free beds, showers and food 3 times a day. They were poorly informed and were vulnerable research subjects from the start exposed to surgeries and treatments that had uncertain benefits. All because Perry Hudson wanted to try and prove something for the sake of science.