Recent experiments with tuberculin, made upon the eyes of children and other patients in public institutions, seem in many cases to have been carried to an extent not easily justified by ordinary ethical ideals. It is impossible to quote all the cases of this phase of human experimentation; but enough can be given to afford any reader the opportunity of judging the morality of the practice.
The experiments in question had one or more of the following characteristics, distinguishing them from ordinary medical treatment:
1. They were made indiscriminately upon large numbers of children or adults, who were under treatment for various ailments. 2. They appear to have been purely experimental in character, and without purpose of individual benefit. 3. They seem to have involved in some cases considerable discomfort or pain and the risk of irreparable injury to the sight. 4. Dying children apparently were not exempt from experimentation.
A recent medical writer, defding the experiments, points out that the tuberculin test could not convey the infection. The test, he says,
"depends on the principle that if a fluid in which tubercle bacilli have grown, and which therefore contains the chemical products of their growth is injected into an animal or person suffering from tuberculosis, a transient increase of temperature occurs, and constitutes the chief sign of a positive reaction…. Later it was found that if the diluted tuberculin was placed on the surface of the eye, there followed in tuberculous persons, a reddening or congestion of the eye, which might go on to the stage of mild conjunctivitis."[1]
[1] Journal of the American Medical Association, February 28, 1914.
Is this a fair summary of the dangers of the eye-test? Let us see what the experimenters tell us.
In the Archives of Internal Medicine for December 15, 1908, two experimenters describe their work. When a drop of turberculin solution is instilled into the eye of certain cases, there occurs, they say, an infetion which varies in intensity in different individuals, "usually attended by lachrimation and moderate fibrinous or fibro-purulent exudation WHICH MAY GO ON TO PROFUSE SUPPURATION." This "profuse suppuration" is something rather more severe than the symptoms described by the apologist just quoted.
The experimenters say:
"Practically, all our patients were under eight years of age, and all but twenty-sex of them were inmates of St. Vincent's Home, an institution with a population of about four hundred, COMPOSED OF FOUNDLINGS, ORPHANS, AND DESTITUTE CHILDREN. The cases in the Home were tested in routine by wards, IRRESPECTIVE OF THE CONDITIONS FROM WHICH THEY WERE SUFFERING, and in the great majority of instances without any knowledge of their physical condition prior to, or at the time that the tests were applied. We purposely deferred the physical examination of these children until after the tests had been applied."