The 10 craziest medical scandals ever

We trust the medical fraternity with our lives. Literal. We have no choice, right? They are the ones who know the names of the fancy drugs that make the pain go away, so there is trust.
Unfortunately, the industry is run and managed by people, and as we know, people make mistakes. Sometimes, in the worst cases, those people don’t even have the public’s best interests in mind. Regardless of whether the mistake is intentional or negligent, a scandal is a scandal.

Here is a list of 10 of the craziest medical scandals ever.

Related: 10 social and biological experiments with bizarre results

10 Thalidomide

The drug was first developed in Germany in 1954 and introduced to the market as a sedative and treatment for morning sickness in pregnant women, colds and nausea. But it was during pregnancies where it caused the most damage. When tested on animals, researchers found that it was virtually impossible to administer a lethal dose of the drug to animals and therefore deemed it safe for human use.

The first affected baby was born in Germany on Christmas Day in 1956 and the disabilities it caused were shocking. The drug’s disabilities included shortened or missing limbs, deformed hands and ears, underdeveloped eyes, sensory impairments and brain damage – the list goes on.

Babies were affected by the drug for five years before a link was made between pregnant women taking the drug and the impact on their unborn children. An estimated 100,000 babies were affected by the drug.^[1]

9 Atherectomy for peripheral artery disease

When the government changed the way doctors are compensated for atherectomies, the game changed and private practitioners were incentivized to perform outpatient atherectomies as a means of relieving pressure on the hospital system.

A low bar had been set for treating arterial blockages, and patients started pouring in. From 2017 to 2021, $1.4 billion in Medicare atherectomy payments — about half of all payments for the procedure — had gone to about 200 providers who performed the procedure in volume.

What followed was a series of amputations caused by the risky artery surgery, which could have been avoided by similarly effective, cheaper treatments. Researchers and doctors discovered excessive and inappropriate use of the procedure, and lawsuits followed.^[2]

8 Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment

When government agencies experiment, they go all-in. When the US Public Health Service was trying to get a handle on syphilis, they were, in their crazy opinion, in a prime position to subject their patients to a little experiment to test the full extent of the disease. progression.

The year was 1932 and the location was Tuskegee, Alabama. When nearly 600 African American men were recruited under the guise of receiving free medical care, they discovered 399 cases of latent syphilis. They told these poor souls that they had “bad blood” and that the other 201 candidates would form the control group.

To understand the disease, the men with syphilis did not receive effective care. One by one they succumbed to the effects of the disease: going blind, going insane, developing various ailments and ultimately dying. Ultimately, 128 men died, 40 women were infected and 19 children were born with congenital syphilis.^[3]

7 Soothing syrup

When a patent medicine hit the market, it promised to soothe small children and help brush their teeth, freshen their breath and relieve constipation. Morphine will do that. In the 19th century, Mrs. Winslow was introduced to the market, but unbeknownst to the target group – mothers – each bottle of syrup contained near-fatal amounts of morphine and alcohol. It was no surprise that the product did exactly as promised and worked like a charm.

As an addictive painkiller, morphine can cause death in infants even in small doses. Some of the babies Ms. Winslow consumed went to sleep and simply never woke up, which predictably caused quite a public outcry. Outrage over poisoning and contaminated food eventually led Congress to pass the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906. Still, it wasn’t until the 1930s that the product was formally removed from the shelves.^[4]

6 Organ Racket

We’ve all heard the urban legend: you have a night out with friends, you black out, and you wake up the next morning in a bath filled with ice and a note saying you’ve had your kidneys removed. It is the stuff of horrors.

In 2008, it emerged that a suspected 400 to 500 kidney transplants were carried out over nearly nine years after victims were lured with job offers, only to be pitched for their organs. The victims were mainly poor workers from villages near Delhi. Those who resisted were drugged and had their kidneys removed against their will.

Following the arrest of five perpetrators, two from the US and three from Greece, in a luxury guesthouse operated by a doctor running a very special racket in the booming city of Gurgaon, India, the house of cards began to collapse.^[5]

5 Asthma cigarettes

Just as we know that the sun can cause sunburn and a bee can sting, we also know that cigarettes cause lung disease and cancer. Strange, then, to imagine a world where this wasn’t common knowledge. It was the early 20th century and the world was still very ignorant about the effects bad habits could have on our bodies. Smoking is a perfect example.

When smoking became popular, it wasn’t just cool; it was also prescribed as a treatment for certain respiratory conditions, such as asthma. Page’s Inhalers were nothing more than medically prescribed cigarettes, intended for the temporary relief of attacks of asthma, hay fever and simple nasal irritation.^[6]

4 Defective silicone

Just like you can’t melt down the crankshaft from an old Nissan Skyline in the shop, turn it into some kind of bracket and use it in hip replacement surgery, you can’t use everything you have lying around to make some kind of bracket out of it. . silicone breast implants. In a nutshell, that’s exactly what French company Poly Implants Prothése did when they sold industrial-grade silicone for use in breast enlargement surgery.

The implants were withdrawn from the market in 2010 after it became known that the silicone was of low quality, posing a risk of rupture. The non-medical grade silicone was also found to be contaminated with higher loads of several cyclic siloxanes, leading to investigation into possible toxicological impacts.

An estimated 30,000 women in France were fitted with the device. An investigation after the withdrawal found that the former owner, Jean-Claude Mas, was guilty of serious fraud. He was sentenced to four years in prison and had to pay a fine of €75,000.^[7]

3 Cancer injections

When Chester Southam suggested continuing a cancer study he had been doing for more than a decade, it initially seemed like a good idea. Southam then told the patients that they were receiving human cells in culture tubes, with the concept of informed consent still a long way off.

Only after three of his colleagues refused to participate in the investigation and resigned from their positions did the scandal come to light. The accusation was that Southam injected liver cancer cells into patients at a hospital known for treating the elderly and those in need of physical care simply to further his cancer research.

Ultimately, 22 patients were injected with the cancer cells. Southam was never prosecuted, but was placed on probation for a year. Fun fact: Southam became president of the American Association for Cancer Research just a few years later.^[8]

2 HIV blood

When hemophiliacs are injured, even with a relatively small cut, it can be fatal, as blood loss can in many cases become an endless stream. For this reason, large amounts of blood may be needed. When a tape leaked showing Akihito Matsumura and his colleagues discussing the possibility that they were using non-heat-treated blood products on their patients, the scandal came to light.

The government, along with the Red Cross, failed to stop use of the products, ultimately leading to more than 1,800 hemophiliacs contracting HIV as a result of receiving HIV-contaminated blood in the 1980s, 400 of whom have since died of AIDS.

It wasn’t that the technology for treating blood didn’t exist. But money would be lost if they had to throw out the inventory of the untreated products. Years later, three top executives pleaded guilty and received prison sentences of two years, 18 months and 16 months respectively.^[9]

1 Monstrous stuttering research

The theory was simple: drawing attention to a child’s normal hesitations could cause stuttering. In an attempt to induce stuttering, researchers at the University of Iowa threw a bunch of normally fluent orphans (they were orphans, of course) into a test environment.

For six months, the orphans were berated, belittled and threatened to test this theory, hoping they would stutter from panic or disillusionment. The study ended and the conclusions were drawn: Asking a child to speak more fluently could actually lead to stuttering.

What also became clear was that the children suffered serious long-term psychological damage and were therefore awarded a settlement amount to avoid expensive lawsuits, even though neither the university nor the government admitted to their wrongdoing.^[10]