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Recommended: Ethics in research

Willowbrook Institute was built in the late 1930s. It was a state-supported institution for mentally retarded children located in central Staten Island in New York City. By 1965 it had 6,000 residents, while it was only planned for 4,000. “A combination of rising placements, budget cuts, ignorance, arrogance and indifference, created notorious conditions at Willowbrook.” This institution was called a “snake pit” by Senator Robert Kennedy. It was very unsanitary and short staffed. Even though it was called a state school but very little “teaching” happened. Under these horrible conditions, children were deliberately infected with Hepatitis under the guidance of Dr. Saul Krugman, as part of an experiment to understand it more.
Saul Krugman studied at New York School of Medicine. He came to Willowbrook as a consultant in infectious disease from New York University and Bellevue Hospital. He was in charge with the hepatitis experiments. He proposed research that appeared promising in distinguishing between strains of Hepatitis and in developing a vaccine. The research was funded by the United States Army (which was interested in hepatitis among soldiers) and approved by the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene.
Krugman and his colleagues had many ethical considerations before beginning the trial. They said that it is well known that infectious hepatitis is much milder in young children. Also that the study group would contain only those who had their parents consent. Thay also said that their was already a serious uncontrollable endemic situation with Hepatitis and suitable studies would’ve lead to its control. They considered this experiment “passive active immunity”. They also felt like the experiment was ok since the plan wa...

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...less communicable. It was also found that the Gamma Globulin had a strong protective effect. One positive thing that came from this experiment is that the study produced a reduction of incidence of Hepatitis among patients and employees by “80 to 85 percent” in Willowbrook. This development did not make the unethical trial right.
After Willowbrook, Krugman received a lot of criticism because of the experiment he conducted, but In 1971 he received praise from the New York State Senate (Seymour B. Thaler) of Queens. He said that the work of Krugman had been done properly. He also called Dr. Krugman a dedicated researcher who had done a magnificent thing. Krugman received many awards for his accomplishments in Science ( ex. The Lasker Award and the Gold medal of the Robert Koch institute in 1978) Krugman Died in 1995 at the age of 84, because of a cerebral hemorrhage

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