A Human Experimenter Was Vice-President Of The American Cancer Society
Source: io9.com
A doctor who was once vice president of the The American Cancer Society turns out to have had a dark history. He twice experimented on human beings, injecting them with cancer cells. Learn about the human experimentation of Chester Southam.
In 1964, Doctor Chester Southam, a well-known cancer researcher, got elected vice-president of the American Cancer Society. The American Cancer Society was established in 1913, and publishes research, supports cancer patients, and looks into new treatment options. The Society’s inclusion of Southam was not entirely inappropriate, as Southam had been researching cancer for over a decade, but the timing was a bit awkward. Southam was elected just after his license was reinstated after a temporary suspension for human experimentation.In fact, a lot of Southam’s research involved human experimentation. In 1952, he had injected inmates at the Ohio State Prison with cancer cells. Human experimentation on prisoners had gained popularity in the 1940s, and despite it being used as a defense for Nazis at the Nuremberg trials, was going strong in the United States in the 1950s.
It wasn’t until the 1970s that experimentation on prisoners was banned, so that wasn’t the reason Southam was a controversial choice for the society’s vice presidency.
Southam’s license was temporarily suspended when he admitted to injecting 22 people at Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital of Brooklyn with live cancer cells.
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Read the full article at: io9.com
