Team:Pitt/Human Practices/duquesne

Duquesne Ethics Forum

Our Presentation

Ethical considerations are a significant portion of any new, developing field and are especially pertinent to synthetic biology. The Pitt iGEM Team believes our best recommendations for the future are developed through analysis of ethical case studies of the past. To this effect, the Pitt iGEM Team participated in the 2014 Duquesne Ethics Forum, where we presented a case study of the Holmesburg Prison Experiments, unethically conducted by Dr. Albert Kligman and the University of Pennsylvania from 1951 to 1974.

Our case shows that despite numerous guidance documents, such as the Helsinki and Nuremburg codes, Dr. Kligman was still able to operate without much oversight. In Dr. Kligman’s words, “Informed consent was unheard of. No one asked me what I was doing. It was a wonderful time.” Even when the public discovered how prisoners at Holmesburg were routinely infected with warts, herpes, and staphylococcus and were test subjects for dozens of unknown chemicals, Dr. Kligman (along with sponsoring government agencies) faced few repercussions for his complete disregard for medical ethics. Dr. Kligman avoided any implications of medical misconduct by blatantly deleting his results. Since his death in 2010, he is revered by his institution and is known to have “lived by a philosophy that compelled him to give back.”

Thankfully, the creation of Institutional Review Boards (IRBs), has provided the necessary oversight to enforce ethical guidelines, such as the NIH Code of Federal Regulations for Human Trials. However, the Pitt iGEM Team believes there is more to the story. Prior to the Holmesburg experiments, medical ethics were not taught in medical school, which made it easier for Dr. Kligman and his associates to turn a blind eye. In that light, our recommendation to the scientific community is to promote and encourage the study of ethics in university curricula, as it pertains to synthetic biology.