U.S. Commission reports on former professor’s research

A presidential commission released a report Tuesday that heavily criticized the research a… A presidential commission released a report Tuesday that heavily criticized the research a former Pitt faculty member conducted on prisoners in Guatemala.

For two years starting in 1946, John Cutler studied the effects of sexually transmitted diseases on some 700 prisoners unknowingly exposed to syphilis and gonorrhea as part of his work with the U.S. Public Health Service. Since last year, the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues reviewed more than 125,000 original documents before releasing its report.

“It is important that we accurately document this clearly unethical historical injustice. We do this to honor the victims,” said Amy Gutmann, the chairwoman of the commission. “In addition, we must look to and learn from the past so that we can assure the public that scientific and medical research today is conducted in an ethical manner … It is imperative that we get this right.”

The commission worked with the Guatemalan government, which undertook its own research, and visited Guatemala to investigate further.

The investigation revealed that research in Guatemala was comparable to research done in Terre Haute, Ind. in 1943, where prison inmates were exposed to gonorrhea. The key difference — reasearchers fully briefed prisoners in Indiana.

“The finding goes a long way to helping the Commission answer the question about whether ethics rules of the time were violated,” Amy Gutmann, the chair of the commission said in a press release.

The commission discussed the findings at their quarterly meeting in Washington, D.C. Commission spokeswoman, Hillary Wicai Viers, said in an email that they plan to release a final report in early September.

According to the commission’s release, the Guatemalan investigation came after President Obama asked officials to review the study when documents about the research surfaced last fall.

Allison Schlesinger, spokeswoman at Pitt’s Graduate School of Public Health, said that the research was uncovered in 2010 after another professor doing research at the University found Cutler’s papers.

She said Pitt immediately turned the documents over to the federal government and cooperated with investigation into Cutler’s study.

Cutler came to Pitt in 1967, nearly 20 years after his research with the U.S. Public Health Service.

Schlesinger said she doesn’t know whether or not Pitt knew about Cutler’s research when they hired him. She did say that Pitt has now enacted safeguards against the kinds of research Cutler conducted.

“That can’t happen again, it won’t happen again,” Shlesinger said. “Sixty-three years ago, adequate human safeguards didn’t exist.”

As previously reported by the Pitt News, journalist Jean Heller discovered in 1972 that similar experiments had been conducted in Tuskegee, Ala. on syphilis-infected African Americans between 1943 and 1972. Cutler was involved in the experiments.

The commission, which Obama created in 2009, said in the release that it will now “turn its attention to its ongoing work in reviewing contemporary standards that protect human research participants.”

The investigation sparked the formation of the International Research Panel, a subcommittee that will advise the commission on the effectiveness of curent federal rules and the international standards for human-based research.

The panel has met three times and will print its findings and recommendations in the Federal Register. The commission will present a final report to the President in December.  

Gutmann said in the release that the final report is meant to assure the President that “the current rules for research participants protect people from harm or unethical treatment, domestically, as well as internationally, is at the heart of the Commission’s charge on human subjects protection.”