Eight years since his narrow escape from death after having the
first and only "physical checkup," Zhang Daniu still keeps asking
when he can get his free treatment as promised by the "checkup"
organizer, a Harvard institution sponsoring human genetic research
projects.
The 55-year-old farmer from Zongyang County, eastern Anhui
Province, said his illness worsens in the rainy season, and he
has trouble sleeping.
Zongyang, under jurisdiction of Anqing City, was a site for
Harvard genetic projects, including one on asthma co-funded by the
United States' National Institutes of Health and Millennium
Pharmaceuticals, a biopharmaceutical company based in Cambridge,
Massachusetts.
Zhang, an asthma sufferer for well over 20 years, has a clear
memory of what happened at the "checkup."
He recalls being out of breath and losing consciousness after he
was told to inhale a spray of a "fog-like" agent, "contained in a
plastic bottle that looked like a mosquito killer sprayer."
Both illiterate, Zhang and his wife, a witness of the entire
"checkup," never saw or heard of any "informed consent agreement,"
nor did they sign any document.
They were not told that their blood samples were to be used in
the Harvard project.
This malpractice was inconsistent with the ethical principles
the Harvard institutions commit themselves to observing. In
"multiple project assurances" submitted to the US government to
secure research funding, the project managers had pledged to follow
the same principles regarding all research involving human beings
as subjects.
These include, "to provide a copy of the IRB-approved (IRB: the
institutional review board) and signed informed consent document to
each subject at the time of consent," and "promptly report to the
IRB any injuries or other un-anticipated problems involving risks
to subjects and others."
Harvard president Lawrence Summers admitted at Beijing
University in May 2002 that the Harvard genetic projects in China
"were wrong" and "badly wrong." Yet a year later, he claimed to be
"gratified" to learn that "the inquiry revealed no substantive harm
done in our study and that all procedural concerns raised have been
fully addressed."
Ironically, Zhang's collapse and unconsciousness for at least
eight hours after inhaling chemicals for the Harvard asthma
genetics study have never been reported, let alone "promptly" or
"fully addressed."
Asthma is only one of more than a dozen projects drawing the
Harvard research team to sample Chinese farmers' blood for genetic
screening to find hereditary links to various diseases, including
hypertension, obesity, diabetes and osteoporosis.
All this was unknown to the Chinese who received the so-called
"checkup."
None of them has benefited in any way from their participation,
not even from the "medical advice" that Xu Xiping, associate
professor of the Harvard School of Public Health and the principal
investigator, promised to offer in his application to the
government.
Zhang Funian, a village medic in Lianhu township near the county
seat of Zongyang, was ordered in the 1995 "checkup" program to
produce a list of asthmatic patients and their family members in
the village and take them to the county station for epidemic
prevention and control "one day around the time the early rice came
out in 1995."
"We were told the checkup would benefit them, and free medical
treatment would be offered," recalled the 52-year-old medic.
After the Harvard projects were challenged for their ethical
problems, the US government began to investigate in 1999. The
investigations did find a "breadth and seriousness of violations"
of ethical principles in the Anhui projects.
However, so far no remedial measures have been offered to Zhang
and other Anhui farmers who were unknowingly victimized in the
projects.
(Xinhua News Agency October 8, 2003)