Refusing to let facts get in the way

A few weeks ago a report was issued by an ethics committee of the Israel Medical Association on the safety and efficacy of anthrax vaccine experiments conducted by the Israel Defense Forces. For many months the panel met, interviewed dozens of witnesses, and pored over thousands of documents before delivering its verdict: "The experiment was characterized by serious ethical failures, most, if not all, of these failures being the result of conducting the experiment in the context of a military hierarchy. There is reason to assume that if the relevant parties in the experiment had acted under the authority of a civilian administration then the decisions that would have been made would have been completely different."

The report exceeds 90 pages, half of which are devoted to the status of human experiments in the IDF. Instead of examining whether the IDF experiment met the legal requirements that are actually on the books, the committee decided to judge the experiment based on the laws they would have liked to see on the books. In the preface to the report, well before detailing its findings, the committee already states that the military hierarchy does not allow for the freedom to choose, making the soldiers' "agreement of consent" to the experiment dubious to begin with. In addition, since experiments in the army do not require the approval of the Health Ministry (according to the law as it stands now), these experiments are said to be flawed from the outset. This brings to mind the trial scene in "Alice in Wonderland": Sentence first!

Only afterward does the panel detail its findings with regard to a specific experiment, and, lo and behold, the "findings" lead to conclusions that accord with the panel's philosophy regarding experiments in the IDF.

Oceans of ink have already been spilled on the issue of medical experiments in hierarchical organizations, and the matter has not been settled. The ethics panel is trying to bring about a resolution to the matter by investigating the anthrax experiment, code-named Omer 2. But what if the facts contradict its philosophy? Then there is no need to pay attention to them. And what if participation in the experiment was offered to 4,000 soldiers but just 700 agreed? The panel has ruled that the soldiers lacked "free will" to choose whether to participate, and refuses to let the facts confuse the issue. The committee decreed that human experiments in the army do not receive authorization from the Health Ministry - in other words, the civilian establishment is not supervising the IDF - and that this is the root of all that is evil in the Omer 2 experiment.

The problem is that the Health Ministry's Helsinki committee on human experiments has found that the experiment was necessary, that its scientific background was solid and that its protocol met all the standards codified by the World Medical Association's Declaration of Helsinki, thus leading the committee to approve the experiment. The Helsinki committee consisted of five medical experts, including specialists in the field of human experimentation and medical ethics. Professor Asa Kasher, the renowned philosopher, served as the committee's public representative.

The bacteria that cause the potentially fatal anthrax infection can be used as a biological weapon. Iraq had such a weapon. If it had been used against Israel, hundreds of thousands would likely have died. It would have been impossible to buy vaccines in the necessary quantity needed to defend Israel's citizens, but it was possible to develop the vaccine domestically. When these facts were presented to the prime minister at the time, Yitzhak Rabin, he gave the go-ahead for the vaccine to be developed. The decision was seconded by Shimon Peres, who was then prime minister.

Once the vaccine is developed, it cannot be authorized for use by the public unless it first undergoes a human trial. Nonetheless, the ethics committee repeatedly made comments like: "There was no scientific basis for the decision," "We were not convinced that the need for the vaccine itself was weighed and considered" and "It is not clear who the decision makers were."

Having served as the IDF's chief medical officer during the first two years of the experiment and having been party to most of the decisions that were made in connection with it, I would assume that if the members of the panel had wanted to find the real answers to their questions, they would have summoned me to testify. But they did not even bother to contact me.

As such, we now need a commission of inquiry headed by a judge to clear up all the facts. If such a committee finds that the Omer 2 experiment was justified and vital, and was conducted properly, then those who ran the experiments will have their names cleared.

The writer is a member of Knesset.