The World Today Archive - Tuesday, 26 September , 2000 00:00:00 Reporter: Michael Vincent COMPERE: A special team from one of the most famous learned societies in the world is to investigate allegations of a disastrous human experiment in the 1960s which has apparently led to the deaths of more than 1,000 South American Indians.



The American Anthropological Association, of which Margaret Mead was a leading figure when she was alive, has responded to concerns by Professor Terry Turner of Cornell University after he read about the experiments in a soon-to-be-published book.



The American geneticist Dr James Neil, who has since died, is alleged to have tested a highly dangerous measles vaccine on the Yanomami people of Venezuela, and then failed to provide them with medical help, simply walking away and leaving them to die.



TERRY TURNER: There are a great many allegations in the book that deal with actions of anthropologists in the field, and so forth, but the most explosive single allegation is that the geneticist who organised a collective scientific expedition to the Yanomami people of Venezuela, shows he used a highly dangerous live vaccine for measles.



He applied the vaccine to the Yanomami, who were not the sort of people you should have applied it to and the result was that the Yanomami developed an epidemic in reaction to this vaccine.



MICHAEL VINCENT: What happened to the Yanomami?



TERRY TURNER: Possibly as many as 1,000 or more may have died of this epidemic. The exact count is not known, because people were unable to count... were unable to stay around in all the communities where there were sick people.



MICHAEL VINCENT: And what were anthropologists involved in this sort of experiment for? If it was to test a vaccine.



TERRY TURNER: Anthropologists were involved to do a genealogical census of the villages. The idea was that they were going to do a... try to find out what the genetic relations between members of the community were, and how they correlated with things like leadership, headmanship, and so on.



MICHAEL VINCENT: Do you think that he was attempting to conduct life or death experiments, in a way, in these people?



TERRY TURNER: I don't think he set out experimentally to kill people. It's not like that. But I think that he was irresponsible in choosing that vaccine and he took a big risk. He thought that his beliefs would turn out to be right and that there wouldn't be the problem that there was.



But in fact there was a problem and the worst of it all is that when there was, he and the expedition did not stick around to help the people they vaccinated. They did a little bit of medical work and then they'd move on to another village and vaccine, and they thus spread the epidemic, and then when they realised what was happening they desperately tried to cover it up and deny what was happening.



Well it got them off the hook, but it also made it next to impossible for them afterwards to try to undo some of the damage, to help the victims and so on.



COMPERE: Professor Terry Turner speaking to us from Cornell University this morning. Michael Vincent with our story.