Send to a friend

The details you provide on this page will not be used to send unsolicited email, and will not be sold to a 3rd party. See privacy policy.

The American Anthropological Association has issued a report on controversial clinical studies of a measles vaccine conducted on the Yanomami people of Venezuela in 1990.

The report states that one of the researchers, Napoleon Chagnon of the University of California in Santa Barbara, violated the association’s ethical code by endangering tribes through a lack of disease-control measures.

But the association’s report stops short of backing an allegation that use of a potentially dangerous measles vaccine may have spread the disease among the Yanomami.

Reference: Nature 418, 118 (2002)

Link to full text