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Archives | (March 2003)
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FEDERAL FRANKENSTEINS: PART ONE
ARE CLINICAL TRIALS BREEDING FEDERAL FRANKENSTEINS? (cont.)
------------------------------------------------------------------ Page 9 of 9 THE BUTCHER’S BILL In the end, 15 patients enrolled in Protocol 126, including Becky Wright, would suffer relapses of their cancer. This included 100% of those whose grafts did not fail. Overall the graft failure rate for the experiment would be 24% -- 24 times the average. Twenty patients would die of graft failure. Out of 82 patients who participated in Protocol 126 only 2 are alive today. These grim statistics leave a host of unanswered questions. Why did the doctors persist when they had to know their therapy simply wasn’t working? Why did management at The Hutch allow the experiment to proceed in the face of a mounting death toll? Since the experiments were funded with taxpayer dollars, where was the federal government? What role did the financial interest of the researchers and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center itself have in creating resistance to shutting down Protocol 126 as the death toll mounted? There is one question, however that has an answer: was this an isolated example of an experiment at The Hutch that somehow got out of control? As the story of Protocol 681, which will be told next month demonstrates, the disturbing answer to that question is no. |
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