Law Commons^™

Could You Repeat That Please? Forty-Five Years Of Testing Pesticides On People, Barbara R. Leiterman Esq.

Barbara R. Leiterman Esq.

Little has been published in the literature about pesticide experiments conducted on human subjects. Yet there were at least twenty-two tests between 1967 and 2011 in which people were intentionally exposed to specific doses of pesticides. Almost all of these experiments violated scientific ethics and human rights. This article aims to describe those tests and their shortcomings, and explore the laws and regulations that incentivize such human experimentation. Ironically, as the public desire for pesticide safety increases, so does the industry’s motivation to test pesticides on people. Bringing these pesticide experiments to light, expanding the public discourse on the subject …