The Malaria Project: The U.S. Government's Secret Mission to Find a Miracle Cure

Journalist Masterson offers a careful blow-by-blow of the "Manhattan Project-style program to find a cure for malaria." After stumbling on a 1943 letter from a prominent New York doctor urging the government to save American soldiers by trying malaria drugs on insane syphilitics, Masterson set out to learn more. She interned with Bill Collins, a scientist from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who had served with the Public Health Service when it tested anti-malarials in the 1950's and 1960's. Masterson uncovered a wealth of unsavory behavior from top doctors helping the government stamp out malaria during WWII and beyond. Asylum patients and prisoners in Massachusetts, New York, Tennessee, and Illinois were used as guinea pigs; given both the disease and experimental drugs. Previously-untried anti-malarials were also given without consent to Peruvians who had contracted the disease naturally. The author notes the irony of Nuremburg Trial prosecutors grilling doctors about war crimes that included giving malaria%E2%80%94then experimental anti-malarials%E2%80%94to Dachau prisoners, "having no way of knowing that Americans were employing very similar research techniques." Masterson's prose is lacking, but otherwise this is a thorough and important assessment of an under-reported and ethically-suspect period in U.S. medical history. (Oct.)