New York Ban On Psychiatric drug tests

A New York judge has ordered the state Department of Health to stop experiments on children and mentally-ill patients who are not competent to give their consent until the Department writes new rules for such experiments. An appeal is now underway.

At present, hundreds and possibly thousands of patients in psychiatric institutions are receiving experimental drug treatments for illnesses including extreme psychosis, Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia, based on consent from relatives and friends. The halted experiments apply to adult patients who are not competent to give their consent, experiments on children that are nontherapeutic and intended only to obtain information for another purpose, and experiments on children to which parents have not consented.

The nonprofit organization Disability Advocates, which brought the lawsuit, claims that the 1990 regulations which were intended to be more sensitive to patients' rights do not go far enough to protect the patients. The central issue, according to the New York Times, is that the regulations allow the Office of Mental health to put mentally-ill patients and children in experiments with the consent of surrogates, and it claims that each type of experiment harbors the possibility of serious abuse.