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A film festival dedicated to stories about people with disabilities kicks off this week in New York City. The event, called “ReelAbilities,” is mostly a celebration of people with different abilities, but one troubling new film explores a particularly dark chapter of medical history.

The award-winning short film, “Willowbrook,” to be screened Friday at New York University Langone Medical Center, examines an unthinkable medical experiment: researchers injected active hepatitis virus into healthy children with mental disabilities.

The story of Willowbrook began in 1947, when New York State converted a hospital into a residential facility that was supposed to house 4,000 children. By the mid-1960s, however, the Willowbrook State School on Staten Island, contained more than 6,000 children. The situation was abominable, with children lining the corridors, many unclothed and lying in their own excrement. It is little wonder that then-Senator Robert F. Kennedy called Willowbrook a “snake pit” after a 1965 tour. An exposé of the brutal conditions by a young television reporter named Geraldo Rivera in 1972 led to government inquiries and the eventual closing of the institution — but not for another 15 years.

Less well known is the story of the research conducted at Willowbrook in the 1950s and 1960s by a team led by Dr. Saul Krugman, an eminent pediatrician and researcher at the New York University School of Medicine (the same institution, to its credit, where the film is being shown). Reasoning that hepatitis was rampant at Willowbrook anyway, Dr. Krugman devised a study in which newly admitted children were injected with active hepatitis virus. Following these children over time, he hoped, would not only provide knowledge about the different viruses that caused hepatitis but also potentially lead to the discovery of preventive vaccines.

The concept of informed consent, in which anyone entering an experiment needs to be told and understand all of the potential risks and benefits, was much less developed in the decades after World War II. Still, Dr. Krugman did generate an early version of a consent form for parents to sign. And the research was funded by the United States Army (which was interested in hepatitis among soldiers) and approved by the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene.

Like the infamous Tuskegee experiment of this same era, in which poor African-American men with syphilis were deliberately left untreated, the Willowbrook case has become a fixture in the world of bioethics, taught to students and young doctors in medical, nursing and public health schools. Although Dr. Krugman and others defended what had occurred, most ethicists see Willowbrook as an example of medicine run amok, in which overzealous researchers did harm to an exceptionally vulnerable population.

In “Willowbrook,” a 16-minute film that won the best short film category at the 2012 Boston Film Festival, the director Ross Cohen reimagines this dark chapter in medical history in a new and provocative way. Mr. Cohen began work on the film when he was a student at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts.

“Willowbrook” tells the story of a medical resident named Bill Huntsman, who begins a new position under the chief physician, Dr. Howard Horowitz. Upon arriving at Willowbrook, Dr. Huntsman learns, to his great surprise, not only that mentally disabled children are being injected with hepatitis but that, as part of his job, he will be expected to make the injections.

What follows is a moving and disturbing chronicle of how a young physician does and does not confront what he sees as a grave ethical violation. When Dr. Huntsman complains that a harmful experiment is being done on children who will not benefit, he is chillingly told that “It’s not about these children. It’s about the future.”

“Willowbrook,” we are informed, is based on true events. Dr. Huntsman, Mr. Cohen told me, did not actually exist, but is rather a composite of several young doctors who found themselves at Willowbrook. The character of Dr. Horowitz is based on Dr. Krugman and another physician.

This artistic license allows Mr. Cohen to explore the ethical and humanistic issues raised at Willowbrook in an especially powerful and poignant way, through an imaginary conversation that Dr. Huntsman has with one of his patients and his efforts to persuade the boy’s mother not to sign the consent form.

Whether or not you ever intend to enter a research trial, there is a lot to be learned about medical research by watching “Willowbrook.”

Although other scientists ultimately developed the vaccine for hepatitis B, Dr. Krugman’s work did help to distinguish among the various forms of hepatitis. Nevertheless, his research remains a cautionary tale about how well-meaning scientists may be tempted to use individuals as a means to an end and how parents may grasp at straws in order to help their very sick children.

“Willowbrook” will be screened at the following locations as part of the ReelAbilities film festival:

Friday, March 8, 3pm at NYU Langone Medical Center (shown with Flying Anne)

Saturday, March 9, 4pm at The JCC in Manhattan (part of Reel Encounters 2013)

Sunday, March 10, 2pm at the Staten Island JCC (shown with The Importance of Tying Your Own Shoes)

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Dr. Barron H. Lerner, a professor of medicine at New York University School of Medicine, is the author of “The Breast Cancer Wars” and “When Illness Goes Public.“