The University of California San Francisco released a statement apologizing for unethical experiments done on inmates in the 1960s and 1970s. UCSF Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Dan Lowenstein said in the statement that the university apologizes for its “explicit role in the harm caused” to subjects and their families” and “acknowledges the institution’s implicit role in perpetuating unethical treatment of vulnerable and underserved populations — regardless of the legal or perceptual standards of the time.” Experiments were conducted by UCSF Dermatology Department faculty members Dr. Howard Maibach and Dr. William Epstein at a California state prison medical facility in Vacaville. The experiments in question included injecting pesticides into inmates and placing them with mosquitos. The goal of the experiments was to analyze the “host attractiveness of humans to mosquitos.”
From The Western Journal:
“Throughout his tenure at UCSF, Maibach experimented on at least 2,600 individuals who were incarcerated at CMF,” the report said. “His research was nontherapeutic, meaning incarcerated individuals were not suffering from any diseases or conditions that the research was intended to treat. Research conducted ranged in invasiveness and purpose,” the report stated. ... “The work I did with colleagues at CMF was considered by many to be appropriate by the standards of the day, although in retrospect those standards were clearly evolving,” Maibach wrote. “I obviously would not work under those circumstances today — as the society in which we live in has unambiguously deemed this inappropriate. Accordingly, I have sincere remorse in relationship to these efforts some decades ago,” he said.
