Between The Lines: The Numb in Numbers
Carol Harker, Editor-in-Chief of Iowa Alumni Magazine reflects on the statistics of war.

Fighting Words
A book of poetry--yes, poetry--published by the UI Press spawns accusations of un-American behavior.

The Price of War
Maureen McCue, physician and instructor with the UI International Programs' Global Health Studies Program, discusses the sacrifices made for so-called advances in medicine on the battlefield and the safe, peaceful alternatives.

The breakthrough offered salvation from a dire disease and would save countless lives. For one volunteer on a sweltering tropical island, though, the quest for answers to a medical mystery ended in death.

The island was Cuba, where, in 1900, Army doctor Walter Reed led the U.S. Army Yellow Fever Commission to determine the cause of the deadly disease that had affected troops during the Spanish-American War two years earlier.

Convinced that the answer lay with the swarms of mosquitoes that haunted these humid, swampy areas, Reed conducted tests in which Army and civilian volunteers agreed to be deliberately bitten by the insects. Eventually, he proved his point—but not before his assistant, physician Jesse Lazear, developed the fever and ultimately died.

In a move that was unusual for the time, the medical staff provided civilian volunteers with informed consent forms that clearly set out the risks of the experiment. Still, by today's standards, such tests would be deemed unacceptably risky, violating federal legislation designed to protect human volunteers in medical research.

The Reed Commission's tests are just one example of how the ethics of medicine can bend under the pressure of war. Susan Lawrence, UI associate professor of history and a faculty member in the Program for Biomedical Ethics and Medical Humanities, says, "During World War II, penicillin was deployed without human trials. There were no FDA regulations. It works—it's out there!"

With WWII-era documents now becoming declassified, historians like Lawrence are learning more about war's influence on medicine. "We're discovering how soldiers were considered to be experimental protocols," she says. "Back then, you didn't have ethical guidelines; they weren't part of the general consciousness."

Ethical guidelines also came into dispute during a more recent conflict—the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91, when mandatory anthrax vaccines for U.S. troops became a contentious issue. Concerned about the vaccine's health risks, hundreds of troops refused to be inoculated. In 2003, a federal judge stopped the vaccination program, saying that members of the armed forces shouldn't be used as "guinea pigs for experimental drugs."

The case highlights another issue: how much control do soldiers have over their own bodies? Do they have the right to refuse medical treatment? Are they entitled to be fully informed about the treatments they receive—and any potential health risks?

"It raises interesting medical ethics questions about the autonomy of soldiers," notes Lawrence. "The public generally considers that a volunteer Army is signing up for the whole package—risk, taking orders, and having to follow orders about personal health care. These types of questions become much more important when it's a draft, when soldiers don't voluntarily accept those risks."

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	The Price Of War		Matching Game: War Quotes
	Medical Advances		Multiple Choice: War & Medicine
	The Numb In Numbers