Homeless people die after bird flu vaccine trial in Poland- questionable ethics
The Telegraph‘s article below, about clinical trials performed on homeless people and descriptions of ambulance medics found guilty of killing their patients for commissions from funeral companies, reinforces the need for person-centered bioethics training for healthcare professionals – an aim of Bioethics International. —
Three Polish doctors and six nurses are facing criminal prosecution after a number of homeless people died following medical trials for a vaccine to the H5N1 bird-flu virus.
21 people died after being given the vaccine The medical staff, from the northern town of Grudziadz, are being investigated over medical trials on as many as 350 homeless and poor people last year, which prosecutors say involved an untried vaccine to the highly-contagious virus.
Authorities claim that the alleged victims received £1-2 to be tested with what they thought was a conventional flu vaccine but, according to investigators, was actually an anti bird-flu drug.
The director of a Grudziadz homeless centre, Mieczyslaw Waclawski, told a Polish newspaper that last year, 21 people from his centre died, a figure well above the average of about eight.
Although authorities have yet to prove a direct link between the deaths and the activities of the medical staff, Poland’s health minister, Ewa Kopacz, has said that the doctors and nurses involved should not return to their profession. “It is in the interests of all doctors that those who are responsible for this are punished,” the minister added.
Investigators are also probing the possibility that the medical staff may have also have deceived the pharmaceutical companies that commissioned the trials. The suspects said that the all those involved knew that the trial involved an anti-H5N1 drug and willingly participated.
The news of the investigation will come as another blow to the reputation of Poland’s beleaguered and poverty-stricken national health service. In 2002, a number of ambulance medics were found guilty of killing their patients for commissions from funeral companies.



[...] Doctors are Only Good And Their Ethics Should Never Questioned These doctors should be insulted, like Dr. Hotez, at the idea that vaccine professionals might be lying about vaccine risks or looking out for anything other than the health concerns of individual patients!Homeless people die after bird flu vaccine trial in Poland- questionable ethicsI mean, so what if the docs lied to homeless about the bird flu vaccine they were testing on them and 21 of them died, they got paid like almost five bucks! Besides… greater good and all that…. and don’t miss the blurb at the end about paramedics killing patients for funeral home commissions. Priceless. Published Wednesday, July 02, 2008 11:13 PM by Adventures in Autism [...]