Word: dockham
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...David H. Dockham '58 is raising the issue in the wake of a state report condemning "human rights violations" by Harvard researchers who used retarded children in experiments with radiation without their consent during the Cold...
...Dockham says that policy is, in effect, a loophole which could permit the same human rights violations criticized by the Massachusetts government to happen again...
...This loophole is an opening big enough for a Mack truck hauling both Fernald and Wrentham School," Dockham said in an interview, referring to two state schools for the retarded at which Harvard faculty used radioactive tracers in experiments on children. "This would allow for the very same thing to occur again...
That's all good and fine. But Dockham wants Harvard to go one little step further. He wants the University just to say it's sorry. "At some point you just need to apologize and damn the details," says Dockham, an advocate for the retarded. "Harvard needs to apologize publicly and take strong moral leadership. I think they could do that without compromising their position...
...Dockham isn't asking for much. All that needs to happen is for Rudenstine to say, unequivocally, that Harvard apologizes for the nature of the tests, and for the fact that victims were tested without their consent. Later on, University lawyers and ethicists can argue about the legality of the tests--about whether Harvard may or may not be legally liable given the standards of the time in which the experiments were conducted...