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Who will protect the patients from illegal experimentations at the Rehovot's Kaplan Hospital?
"Dozens of illegal experiments and studies were performed on hundreds of elderly patients at the Kaplan Hospital in Rehovot and the Hartzfeld Geriatric Hospital in Gedera. This is just one of the conclusions reached by a Health Ministry inquiry committee (Ran Reznick, Haaretz, June 12). According to the inquiry, the experiments were conducted over the past decade by specialists in geriatrics at both hospitals, including both residents and senior physicians. The doctors exploited the patients' poor cognitive state, which did not enable them to truly object to the experiments performed on their bodies.
The Health Ministry investigation did not end with the doctors; it also revealed unprecedentedly grave deficiencies in the conduct and functioning of the hospital administrators - Dr. Joseph Bar-El, director of Kaplan-Hartzfeld, and Dr. Shmuel Levy, the hospitals' deputy director, who is responsible for Hartzfeld. The inquiry found that both of them acted in a manner inappropriate to a doctor and director of a medical establishment, and the committee will ask that steps be taken against them. The inquiry also leveled harsh criticism against the functioning of Kaplan's committee for approving medical experiments on human beings (the Helsinki Committee), as well as against the Clalit health maintenance organization, which owns both hospitals.
The findings about the experiments at Kaplan and Hartzfeld were exceptional in their severity and scope. But according to the State Comptroller's Report published in May 2005, the practice itself is not at all unusual: Many Israeli hospitals conduct experiments that grossly violate both patients' rights and the law. In his report, the comptroller exposed a long list of grave deficiencies and negligence in the Health Ministry's supervision over the performance of thousands of experiments at hospitals. According to the report, the Health Ministry ignores its legal and public obligation to maintain ongoing supervision over this sensitive field. It also turns a blind eye to some of the information it receives about cases of death or other unusual events that occurred while experiments were being performed, or about experiments that were approved illegally. The comptroller's report even stated that illegal experiments at Kaplan and Hartzfeld caused the death of three patients.
In other affairs investigated by the Health Ministry in recent years, relating to gross violations of patients' rights and injury to patients, both the ministry's management and the hospitals' managements refrained from taking genuine steps against the hospital directors who were responsible for these events.
We must insist that senior officials at both the Health Ministry and the Clalit HMO, which is responsible for about half of all hospital beds in Israel, take vigorous steps against the heads of Kaplan and Hartzfeld, against those responsible for the illegal experiments and against those who conducted them. They must also take action against those who failed in supervising the conduct of experiments at these hospitals. The need for closer supervision over experiments on human beings is urgent and critical, inter alia, in order to restore patients' faith in their doctors."
Source: Haaretz Editorial. Who will protect the patients? Haaretz.com (15 June 2006) [FullText]
The Health Ministry investigation did not end with the doctors; it also revealed unprecedentedly grave deficiencies in the conduct and functioning of the hospital administrators - Dr. Joseph Bar-El, director of Kaplan-Hartzfeld, and Dr. Shmuel Levy, the hospitals' deputy director, who is responsible for Hartzfeld. The inquiry found that both of them acted in a manner inappropriate to a doctor and director of a medical establishment, and the committee will ask that steps be taken against them. The inquiry also leveled harsh criticism against the functioning of Kaplan's committee for approving medical experiments on human beings (the Helsinki Committee), as well as against the Clalit health maintenance organization, which owns both hospitals.
The findings about the experiments at Kaplan and Hartzfeld were exceptional in their severity and scope. But according to the State Comptroller's Report published in May 2005, the practice itself is not at all unusual: Many Israeli hospitals conduct experiments that grossly violate both patients' rights and the law. In his report, the comptroller exposed a long list of grave deficiencies and negligence in the Health Ministry's supervision over the performance of thousands of experiments at hospitals. According to the report, the Health Ministry ignores its legal and public obligation to maintain ongoing supervision over this sensitive field. It also turns a blind eye to some of the information it receives about cases of death or other unusual events that occurred while experiments were being performed, or about experiments that were approved illegally. The comptroller's report even stated that illegal experiments at Kaplan and Hartzfeld caused the death of three patients.
In other affairs investigated by the Health Ministry in recent years, relating to gross violations of patients' rights and injury to patients, both the ministry's management and the hospitals' managements refrained from taking genuine steps against the hospital directors who were responsible for these events.
We must insist that senior officials at both the Health Ministry and the Clalit HMO, which is responsible for about half of all hospital beds in Israel, take vigorous steps against the heads of Kaplan and Hartzfeld, against those responsible for the illegal experiments and against those who conducted them. They must also take action against those who failed in supervising the conduct of experiments at these hospitals. The need for closer supervision over experiments on human beings is urgent and critical, inter alia, in order to restore patients' faith in their doctors."
Source: Haaretz Editorial. Who will protect the patients? Haaretz.com (15 June 2006) [FullText]
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