Bioethics: May 2008 Archives

One soil scientist, Murray McBride, who reviewed the study, commented: "It's not at all clear that the sludge binding the lead will be preserved in the acidity of the stomach. Actually thinking about a child ingesting this, there's a very good chance that it's not safe . . .If you're not telling them what kinds of chemicals could be in there, how could they even make an informed decision. If you're telling them it's absolutely safe, then it's not ethical. In many relatively wealthy people's neighborhoods, I would think that people would research this a little and see a problem and raise a red flag."

The study’s lead author, Mark Farfel, formerly was associated with Baltimore’s Kennedy Krieger Institute, where he was a project manager. In 2001, Maryland's highest court, in reviewing another Farfel/Kennedy Kreiger study concerned with lead abatement in poor black neighborhoods, compared it to the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study on poor black sharecroppers. The Court concluded: “These programs were somewhat alike in the vulnerability of the subjects: uneducated African-American men, debilitated patients in a charity hospital, prisoners of war, inmates of concentration camps and others falling within the custody and control of the agencies conducting or approving the experiments."

Alan Milstein