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Human guinea pigs: An experiment in a Lab named `India`
An anti-cancer drug was administered to patients at the Regional Cancer Centre, Thiruvanthapuram(Kerala) apparently as part of a study being conducted by a professor who teaches at the Johns Hopkins University, in its school of arts and sciences. The patients were not told about the side-effects that might occur.
An anti-cancer drug was administered to patients at the Regional Cancer Centre, Thiruvanthapuram(Kerala) apparently as part of a study being conducted by a professor who teaches at the Johns Hopkins University, in its school of arts and sciences. The patients were not told about the side-effects that might occur.
Inspired in part by a desire to cure the disease that killed her father, Huang late in her career left the abstract world of basic science to launch a self-funded crusade to test a new cancer drug although this was not her area of expertise.
She tried an unconventional approach. Huang and Gnabre discovered that an extract from an ancient Native American herbal medication, derived from the creosote plant, blocks the growth of tumors in mice. Huang wanted to test the chemical on humans, although she had not conducted experiments on people before. And she focused on oral tumors because she thought these would be easier to observe than tumors inside the body. She picked Kerala, India, because it had a high rate of oral cancer. And she formed a partnership with research physicians at the Regional Cancer Center in Kerala. Fearing that applying for a grant would take too long, she decided to pay $19,000 to fund the experiment herself, hoping early success would attract more funding.
From November 1999 to April last year, Huang worked with physicians at the cancer center in India, who injected the chemical into tumors in the mouths of 26 patients. Huang said most tumors showed signs of shrinking or dying before surgery. But the experiment fell under intense attack in the Indian media when a radiologist at the center complained that a prestigious American university was taking advantage of poor Third World residents by using chemicals not adequately tested for safety or approved by any government. An investigation by a three-member Hopkins Committee concluded on Oct. 24 that Huang had been "negligent" and had "cut procedural corners" in failing to seek the approval of a Hopkins internal review board.
Huang did not commit academic fraud, the panel concluded, but she had failed to warn her volunteers of the risks, and inflated her title to "director of the department of biology at Johns Hopkins" in signing unauthorized agreements between Hopkins and the cancer center in India. And she broke federal laws by transporting her chemical out of the United States without approval of the Food and Drug Administration.
She tried an unconventional approach. Huang and Gnabre discovered that an extract from an ancient Native American herbal medication, derived from the creosote plant, blocks the growth of tumors in mice. Huang wanted to test the chemical on humans, although she had not conducted experiments on people before. And she focused on oral tumors because she thought these would be easier to observe than tumors inside the body. She picked Kerala, India, because it had a high rate of oral cancer. And she formed a partnership with research physicians at the Regional Cancer Center in Kerala. Fearing that applying for a grant would take too long, she decided to pay $19,000 to fund the experiment herself, hoping early success would attract more funding.
From November 1999 to April last year, Huang worked with physicians at the cancer center in India, who injected the chemical into tumors in the mouths of 26 patients. Huang said most tumors showed signs of shrinking or dying before surgery. But the experiment fell under intense attack in the Indian media when a radiologist at the center complained that a prestigious American university was taking advantage of poor Third World residents by using chemicals not adequately tested for safety or approved by any government. An investigation by a three-member Hopkins Committee concluded on Oct. 24 that Huang had been "negligent" and had "cut procedural corners" in failing to seek the approval of a Hopkins internal review board.
Huang did not commit academic fraud, the panel concluded, but she had failed to warn her volunteers of the risks, and inflated her title to "director of the department of biology at Johns Hopkins" in signing unauthorized agreements between Hopkins and the cancer center in India. And she broke federal laws by transporting her chemical out of the United States without approval of the Food and Drug Administration.