Artificial blood tested on patients without consent

[fierceawakening]

From CNN:
Artificial blood tested on patients without consent

Friday, February 20, 2004 Posted: 9:27 AM EST (1427 GMT)

CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- Paramedics are testing an experimental blood substitute on severely injured patients without their consent in an unusual study under way or proposed at 20 hospitals around the country.

The study was launched

Comments

[wrin]

We have no research at all about this period of time, and very little of the medicine we use to resuscitate people from near-death is proven or tested ... mostly because of the ethics involved.

Unfortunately this means many old stand-bys of emergency medicine have about as much research behind them as squeezing mayonnaise directly IV, in the words of a paramedic colleague of mine. Ethics committees get squeamish over press like this and are not particularly enthusiastic about approving such research.

[st_andrews_girl]

Not debating the ethics, however, it has always bothered me that people talk about the first trial failing. There's no way to tell if it has failed or not. Many of the patients would likely have died, even with real blood. So, from a scientific prospective, there is no proof that the drug did anything that real blood would not have done.
I can't wrap my mind around a good way to go about testing blood substitutes. It's not the sort of thing that can be done in animals, and the consent issue is obviously horrifying in unconscious patients. But it's also something desperately needed.

[dracothrope]

It's such a good idea in theory... but like they mention above, is there going to be a point where people get to saying, "okay, you're unconscious/unable to speak for yourself, so you're fair game!"

Why not ask people for consent and then give out the bracelets to people who are -willing- to participate, instead of to those who aren't, if that's an alternative? :\

[fierceawakening]

Why not ask people for consent and then give out the bracelets to people who are -willing- to participate, instead of to those who aren't, if that's an alternative? :\

yeah, that.

[sushis]

I'm not sure I understand enough to have an opinion yet, although the reasoning some people in the article appear to be using is scary. If human blood were available, and people were being given a substitute instead, that would be unconscionable

But: "Ambulances do not carry human blood, which has a short shelf life. Instead, patients get an intravenous saline solution to temporarily build up fluid volume and restore blood pressure."

I'm unclear on whether the deaths that resulted after the new blood substitute was used are thought to be *because* of the substitute, or because the patients didn't get *real* blood soon enough...Still, if the saline solution is the *accepted* emergency treatment, then, come to think of it, it *does* seem that the patients should need to give prior consent, or the new substitute shouldn't be used. That they've started using it again despite the discontinuation in 1998 makes me wonder if there might be a shady financial relationship with PolyHeme and the government.