Chapter 3: Research, Race, and Social Education

At the end of World War II, Nazi doctors and scientists were put on trial for the murder of concentration camp inmates who were used as research subjects. In the Willowbrook Hepatitis Study, beginning in the mid-1950s, children with developmental disabilities at an institution on Staten Island were deliberately infected with a mild form of hepatitis in order to study the progression of the disease and to test the effectiveness of gamma globulin as an agent for inoculation. In 1971, a number of Mexican American women in San Antonio, Texas, took part in a study to determine side effects of an oral contraceptive. These women had come to a clinic seeking contraceptives, but without their knowledge or consent, they received a placebo during half of the trial. Ten of the seventy-six participants became pregnant. And in the “Tea Room Trade” study, which focused on homosexual practices in public restrooms, the researcher went undercover and gained the confidence of subjects by acting as a lookout. He then identified participants by tracing their license plates and later distributed a “social health survey” in their communities (Bankert & Cooper, n.d.)