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November 28, 2000	Contact: Sharon Butler (312) 355-2522; sbutler@uic.edu
	Suzanne Poirier (312) 996-6738; spoirier@uic.edu

ATTN: ASSIGNMENT EDITORS and HEALTH SCIENCE REPORTERS

HUMAN MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS: ARE THEY EVER JUSTIFIED?

WHO/ WHAT:

Joel D. Howell, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Program in Society and Medicine and co-director of the Clinical Scholars Program at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, will present a talk entitled "Willowbrook: The Recounting of a Medical Experiment."

WHEN: Friday, Dec. 1, 12:30 p.m.

WHERE: Chicago Illini Union 828 S. Wolcott Ave., Room 206

DETAILS:

When, if ever, is it acceptable to intentionally infect a person with a disease in order to carry out biomedical research? This is the central question in Howell's talk.

In studies at the Willowbrook State School in 1955, children were infected with the hepatitis virus. Much of our knowledge of hepatitis comes from these studies, which were justified in part on the claim that almost all children at the school would eventually have become infected anyway. The talk will explore the basis on which that claim was made and why it took so long for the claim to be challenged.

This event is free and open to the public. It is cosponsored by the Medical Humanities Program of the departments of medical education and history at UIC.

 

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