A History of Human Experiments with Hepatitis, 1942-1972

FAIN: FA-51616-05

Sydney A. Halpern
Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois (Chicago, IL 60612-4305)

This projects examines a series of experiments conducted between 1942 and 1972 in which American medical researchers deliberately infected human subjects with hepatitis. Its major product will be book that draws on previously unmined archival records to account for the actions and motivations of multiple participants in the hepatitis studies: the scientists, their federal sponsors, the managers of institutions providing access to subjects, and even one group of subjects. A central goal of the volume is to the clarify how shifting cultural currents and moral constructions first enabled and then curtailed dangerous nontherapeutic medical research in America.