Midwest Research Institute: The Department of Defense's Guinea Pig

Midwest Research Institute: The Department of Defense's Guinea Pig

23"Everything is permissible"-but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is permissible"-but not everything is constructive. 24Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others.

The Apostle Paul, 1 Corinthians 10:22-23

The Apostle Paul reiterated the same words four chapters earlier to the church of Corinth and referred specifically to the topic of sexual immorality. However, we can take this simple lesson - that one can do anything, but not everything is beneficial, and apply it to issues of human experimentation. Paul also speaks truth when he mentions that people should consider the need and good of others rather than satisfy their own selfish needs. These two verses touch on issues of beneficence (duty to do good), and nonmaleficence (duty to do no harm)- two of the core tenets of many ethics codes and those that were challenged by the Midwest Research Institute (MRI). In this paper, I will define the potential ethical issues associated with the MRI study, state a position of whether the research was ethical, support my position with data and logic, demonstrate a knowledge of the principles of human experimentation, and demonstrate a knowledge of ethical philosophy by suggesting how this issue would be viewed by one or more major philosophers.

Define the potential ethical issues associated with the MRI study

Potential ethical issues relate to the source of funding for MRI's research, whether or not MRI fully disclosed the drug's potential side effects to volunteers, and whether or not MRI considered any "prior reason to believe that death or disabling injury (should) occur."

According to James Spigarelli, executive vice president of MRI, $40 to $50 million of MRI's $250 million research volume comes from defense-related contracts. MRI has experienced a positive long-standing relationship with the Department of Defense (DoD). Because a significant amount of MRI's volume is DoD funded and MRI would never want to jeopardize this relationship, there is always the issue of whether or not results are biased or even if the research staff genuinely agree that the experiment is fully ethical.

MRI should have fully disclosed all the known and well-published adverse toxicity caused by pyrodostigmine bromide (PB). When the DoD was given the authority to allow the military to administer PB without giving soldiers the opportunity to refuse it, there was the stipulation that the DoD was to "disseminate additional information to all its military personnel concerning the risks and benefits of PB. However, according to the Rockefeller Report, 86 percent of soldiers who testified before the Senate Veterans Committee said there was no such information provided to them. Because this was a DoD funded experiment, it is logical to question whether MRI fully disclosed this pertinent information.

Numerous research done by Tiedt, Kato, and even DoD researchers such as Bowman and Schuschereba point to research showing skeletal and anatomical muscle defects by PB. , , , Such potential defects include myocardial dysfunction (cardiomyopathy). Other research by scientists such as Abou-Donia has shown negative synergistic effects of PB with DEET and insecticides, but substantial research has linked PB with negative outcomes. MRI does not seem to have considered this research before its own experimentation.

State a position of whether the research was ethical

MRI's research was unethical based on the grounds that the experimental method did not benefit the public good (1st major tenet of Percival's Code), the experimental method did not exhaust all other methods (2nd major tenet of Percival's Code), and the experiment should not have been conducted because there was prior reason to believe that death or disabling injury would occur (3rd major tenet of the Nuremberg Code).

Support my position with data and logic

The experimental method did not benefit the public good. The purpose of the MRI study was to show that the use of PB in healthy adults is a protectant against nerve agents. However, the Rockefeller Report had already concluded that PB does not prevent soman (the one specific nerve agent PB is supposed to target) from crossing the blood-brain barrier or stop its negative effects on the nervous system. Animals exposed to soman and administered PB still suffered from convulsions and suffered spinal cord damage. Also, soldiers in the first Gulf War (GWI) were subject to other synergistic variables such as stress and pesticides and MRI did not take this into consideration to create a similar environment. Even though the MRI study uncovered a number