Vcu President Testifies Before White House Committee on Human Radiation Experiments

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Office of Media Relations Virginia Commonwealth University FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Melissa R. Burnside VCU PRESIDENT TESTIFIES BEFORE WHITE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RADIATION EXPERIMENTS Dr. Eugene P. Trani, president of Virginia Commonwealth University, testified today (July 25) during the public comment session of the White House Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments' meeting, at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. Trani outlined the components of a 10-year research project on Thermal and Radiation Injury conducted at VCU's Medical College of Virginia from 1949-59. The principal investigators of the research were MCV physicians Everett I. Evans, M.D., an internationally recognized burn researcher who died in 1954, and B.W. Haynes, Jr., M.D., former director of MCV's burn unit who is now retired and living in Richmond. Trani's invitation to appear before the committee was extended after a commentary in The Washinqton Post, published June 19, cited medical research Trani told the committee, "The studies conducted at MCV were neither secret nor dangerous. ... In the course of the project, 27 articles were published in nationally recognized scientific journals; it also received coverage in local newspapers." Army-funded thermal and radiation research conducted at the medical school and

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hospital was done so with the highest of ethical and medical standards. "In all," Trani said, "what resulted from this work were the discoveries that would lead to the protocols used today to treat burn victims." During his five-minute presentation to the committee, Trani also shared new findings regarding the voluntary participation of Virginia prisoners in the medical research project. The studies involving the prisoners, conducted in the 1950s, were designed to provide data on the palatability of liquid diets and to test a new form of burn bandage. The studies were conducted by Evans for the U . S . Department of Defense, with concurrence of the Virginia State Board of Welfare and Institutions. While some prisoners were subjected to bed rest and liquid diets, others received small, shallow burns about a half-inch in diameter on the forearms. Trani also highlighted the participation of Dr. W.J.H. Butterfield, a MCV research fellow who helped coordinate the prisoner project. Butterfield's records "could easily have served as the blueprint for the tenets of informed In an extensive memo to Evans found in the M C V archives, Butterfield wrote, "All human beings exposed to trials, dangerous or otherwise, can withdraw, and have a chance for protest. In any human experiment, the subjects must know the risks, and any human experiment must undertake to be open to inquirv and, if necessary, investisation." Trani told the advisory committee's members that their work must "apply the most rigorous standards of intellectual honesty. Otherwise, the risk is too great that your work will be sensationalized out of all proportion to its true intent," he said. "Having been partners in these radiation studies, the government and the academic community now should work together to ensure that this story is told thoroughly and accurately -- and that, in the process, the real victims are helped,'' Trani stated.