Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1999. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
The Associated Press - Saturday, Oct. 16, 1999
David Rising, Associated Press Writer
When those and other experiments were publicized in the 1970s, they stopped. Research was banned in some state prisons and curtailed in others.
Vowing not to repeat the mistakes of the past, a panel of experts has produced a preliminary set of guidelines for clinical tests on prison inmates across the country. The moves follows requests by prisoners to participate in research again, given the advent of AIDS and hepatitis C.
Dr. Anne De Groot said clinical tests are now being done in some prisons and jails across the country, and are regulated under federal guidelines. But, she said, the current guidelines say very little about prisoner participation in research and there is little oversight.
Nevertheless, prisoners who have AIDS must be given access to cutting-edge clinical tests, she said Friday.
"The committee believes that research trials should be made accessible to inmates under certain conditions," said De Groot, co-chair of the HIV/Prison Project at the Brown University AIDS Program.
"Those conditions may set a higher standard for trials conducted in correctional settings than is currently set for trials outside corrections, due to the special vulnerability of prisoners," she said.
Friday's meeting concluded a three-day conference convened by the Brown University AIDS Program and the HIV in Prisons Program of Yale University.
As part of the preliminary guidelines, De Groot said the team of 16 AIDS researchers, medical ethicists, lawyers and prisoner advocates decided prisons where research is conducted must have high quality medical care already available, so inmates do not feel coerced into research programs simply to get proper treatment.
And, De Groot said, former inmates should be used as impartial observers to oversee research projects.
The guidelines will take at least two months to be finalized because several experts crucial to their development were not able to attend Friday's session, De Groot said.
They will then be submitted to medical and governmental organizations for approval and adoption.
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