Breakthrough for 'guinea pig kids'

A US Federal investigation has backed the findings of a BBC documentary on the misuse of foster children in testing HIV drugs.

COMPLAINT UPHELD Following a complaint, an investigation by the BBC's Editorial Complaints Unit has identified serious failings with this programme and ruled that some of the online material based on it was misleading. For full details click here

Guinea Pig Kids, part of the This World series on BBC Two, revealed how children as young as a few months old were being enrolled in the New York trials without proper consent.

In some cases children were taken from family or guardians when they refused to administer drugs which had severe side effects.

The children were in the care of the New York social services. Most were orphans and had been born to poor black women, many of them drug users.

Guinea Pig Kids (broadcast in the UK on 30 November 2004)

Now he US Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Human Research Protections has ruled that Columbia University Presbyterian Medical Center in New York, which ran the tests, broke federal guidelines in the way it selected chldren and obtained permission from parents and guardians.

In a letter to the medical centre dated 23 May 2005, the government department noted: "When some or all of the subjects (eg children) are likely to be vulnerable to coercion or undue influence, additional safeguards have been included in the Health and Human Services (HHS) regulations to protect the rights and welfare of these subjects."

Findings in full Read the letters issued by the US Department of Health and Human Services

Guinea Pig Kids and the ensuing publicity prompted a congressional hearing, at which experts testified that the standards for enrolling foster children in medical experiments varied widely across the country. Some lawmakers complained that the foster kids had fewer protections than prisoners.