California university apologises for carrying out 'pesticide' experiments on over 2000 prisoners

San Francisco: A well-known medical school in California has issued an apology after being exposed of carrying out several unethical medical experiments on at least 2,600 prisoners in the 1960s and 1970s, including applying pesticides and herbicides to the prisoners’ skin and injecting them into their veins, reports say.

The experiments were carried out on men at the California Medical Facility, a prison hospital in Vacaville, about 50 miles northeast of San Francisco, by two dermatologists from the University of California. One of whom is still employed at the university.

It came to light earlier this month when the university’s Program for Historical Reconciliation published a report on the experiments, claiming that the doctors used “questionable informed consent practises” and operated on men who didn’t have any of the conditions or illnesses that the research was intended to treat.

The findings of the programme were first reported by a San Francisco newspaper on Wednesday.

Following this, executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Dan Lowenstein issued a statement apologising for the institution’s role in causing the harm to human subjects, their families, and the community by doing this harmful research.

Lowenstein also acknowledged the institution’s implicit part in perpetuating unethical treatment of vulnerable and underserved populations.

The report further said that more research is needed to determine the extent of the prisoners’ injuries as a result of the experiments and what the university should do in response.

“We are still considering the recommendations and determining appropriate next steps,” the university said Thursday in a statement.

“We will do so with humility and a continuing commitment to a more just, equitable, and ethical future.” According to Dana Simas, a spokesperson for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, officials have not yet read the report.

The agency and California Correctional Health Care Services, on the other hand, “strive to ensure the incarcerated population receives appropriate health care that meets the community standard of care and ethics,” Simas wrote.

Dr. Howard Maibach and Dr. William Epstein’s research was highlighted in the report. Maibach is still employed at the university, and Epstein died in 2006. It was unclear whether Maibach would face any repercussions as a result of the report.

According to a 1977 article in the university’s student newspaper, the experiments involved administering pesticides and herbicides to the incarcerated men and those volunteered for the studies, were paid $30 a month for their participation. This was by far one of the highest-paid roles in the prison.

Other experiments included placing small cages containing mosquitos close to the participants’ arms or directly on their skin to determine “human host attractiveness to mosquitos,” according to the report.

The study ended in 1977, a year after the federal government prohibited human subject research in state prisons.

However, Epstein testified in state hearings in 1977 in support of biomedical experimentation in prisons, according to the report, and investigators found no evidence that he changed his mind before his death.

While Maibach expressed regret in a letter to the university’s dermatology department for participating in research that did not meet current standards, he also stated that he believed the experiments had benefited some of the patients.

“What I believed to be ethical as a matter of course forty or fifty years ago is not considered ethical today,” he wrote.

“I do not recall in any way in which the studies caused medical harm to the participants.”

According to the university, there is no evidence that the doctors’ research was specifically directed at Black men, despite the fact that they were trained by a now-deceased Philadelphia doctor whose research at a Pennsylvania prison was unethical and disrespectful toward the subjects, many of whom were incarcerated Black men.

The report also discovered that many of Maibach’s publications throughout his career have contributed to the biologization of race, which he addressed in his letter by saying he has now “come to the understanding that race has always been a social and not a biological construct, something not appreciated by so many of us in a previous era.”

The report said: “While one of Maibach’s recent articles suggest a potential reconsideration of the biology of race, we believe the long history of his research on racial skin differences, with race as a possible biological factor, perpetuated the continuation of racial science in dermatology and has yet to be publicly addressed.

Edward Maibach, Maibach’s son, told a global media outlet via email that his father had a stroke last week and was unable to respond to press inquiries.

According to the younger Maibach, his father was not permitted to meet with the report’s authors or access their documents.

The report and a press release from the university, he wrote, treated his father “as a ’lone ranger’ who seemingly acted without knowledge or approval at others at UCSF. This is also incorrect.”

“UCSF administrators, including the UCSF ethicist, were aware of and supported Dr. Maibach’s activities at Vacaville,” Edward Maibach wrote.

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