Willowbrook Case Study Hepatitis

This case study was performed at the mental health institution for young children, called Willowbrook State School, where hepatitis was running rampant. With the permission of the parents, researchers began to dose children, already in the institute and asking for admission, with a weak form of the hepatitis virus and antibodies. Through this research two strains for hepatitis were discovered, A and B. (1, Willowbrook) The children with the antibodies injected into them did not have as severe symptoms as those only injected with the weak virus. The children had the best medical services provided for them since it was a medical institution. (1, Willowbrook) At this place it was very common to get hepatitis, so this sparked the curiosity of …show more content…
There was no good reason to be doing the experiment on the mentally ill children in the first place because they cannot grasp a clear understanding of what the experiment intel even with parental consent. Even with parental consent, perhaps the parents felt there was no other choice in the matter to be able to get their child institutionalized. Then there is the objection to running experiments on institutionalized populations of any sort, for example jails. Those patients would truly have no choice in the matter if it was brought to their attention because they were being run by other or the government. There was also no good reason to be doing this test on a population of children when there were adult workers at the same institution. Hepatitis would not have been a problem in the first place if the institution had been better about health regulation in such a dense population of children. Therefore the experiment would have never been necessary if they had controlled overcrowding and sanitation. (4, Willowbrook) There is also a chance of the workers of the experiment getting the virus which is endangering them in the