Vol. 75/No. 37      October 17, 2011

The court document charges the medical institution with enticing more than 100 families “into living in lead-tainted housing” in order to subject their children “to a research program which intentionally exposed them to lead poisoning in order for … scientific researchers to assess the success of lead paint or lead dust abatement measures.”

According to the suit, the six-year program, which began in 1993, targeted families “who were predominantly from a lower economic strata and minorities.” Lead had been at that time widely used in home paint. Lead poisoning can cause irreversible brain damage to children.

Armstrong’s father was never told that the so-called lead-free housing Kennedy Krieger urged him to rent was in fact contaminated. He and other test subjects were not told that only half measures had been taken to get rid of lead, that the study sought to analyze the effectiveness of a “low cost” approach to decontamination.

Over the course of two years, blood samples were taken from his son. Later, a pediatrician told him that Armstrong Jr.’s blood lead levels were “two and a half to three times higher than they had been before the family moved into the apartment,” reported the New York Times. Kennedy Krieger provided no medical treatment to the children involved in the study.

The class action lawsuit is the latest in a decade-long battle over the institute’s lead paint study. In 2001 the Maryland Court of Appeals compared the study to the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. Earlier lawsuits were settled confidentially.
 
 
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‘Experiment’ in Guatemala infected 1,300 with diseases
Report exposes secret US project in 1940s  
 
 
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