For two years in the early 1990s, the Kennedy Krieger Institute conducted a comprehensive study of the medical ramifications of lead paint in homes. It aimed to identify and remedy the hazards of a material then ubiquitous in lower-class Baltimore houses, according to the Institute's experiment records. The Institute is a Baltimore-based research facility for juvenile and adolescent developmental disabilities and a direct affiliate of Hopkins.
The lead author of the study, Mark Farfel, is a professor of global health at the University's Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Now, nearly two decades later, the Institute faces the risk of a class-action lawsuit filed by two Baltimore lawyers, who claim that the undertakings of the study deliberately jeopardized the health of poor African-American children in Baltimore.
The children, the lawsuit contends, were the experiment's "guinea pigs."
The Institute, meanwhile, maintains that the study was both innocuous and ultimately beneficial to the city of Baltimore. Its results served as the precursor for MD Environmental Law 6-301, which passed in 1996 and resulted in a 93 percent decrease in reported lead poisoning cases in Baltimore. Prior to this legislation, eighty percent of lead poisoning incidents in Maryland occurred in Baltimore.
"The research that was conducted is complex and the issue is confounded by a decade of media coverage that has been filled with inaccuracies," Elise Welker, Director of Communications of Kennedy Krieger Institute, wrote in an e-mail to The News-Letter.
In early 1993, scientists behind the Institute's Lead-Based Paint Abatement and Repair and Maintenance Study in Baltimore solicited more than a hundred lower-class Baltimore families to move into homes across East and West Baltimore – homes that had undergone different methods of lead paint and dust reduction, ranging from paint removal to the installation of new floors. A home having undergone no lead abatement procedures would pose substantial medical risks to its inhabitants; acknowledging these hazards, the experiment's authors deliberately failed to establish a control group of untreated homes.
The dangers associated with lead are varied and often dire; the brain is at the forefront of susceptibility, according to the Baltimore City Health Department's Lead Poisoning Prevention website. Public health officials have long examined the relationship between lead poisoning and crime, since the developmental inhibitions of lead poisoning can yield character traits with propensities for violent behavior.
To minimize health risks and potential public backlash, the Institute contends that the study's criteria for selecting familial subjects were comprehensive, entailing age requirements, an interview process and an assessment of the family's active interest in participation.
Baltimore attorney William H. "Billy" Murphy filed the lawsuit against the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore City Circuit Court on Thursday, September 15. Filed as Armstrong vs. Kennedy, the suit is the second bout of legal action surrounding the lead paint study in a decade. Its plaintiffs accuse the Institute of negligence, fraud and battery.
The suit argues that the Institute failed to provide a "complete and clear explanation" of the toxic nature of the experiments to the parents of the implicated children, ultimately impacting the health of many of its subjects.
The plaintiff in the case, 20-year-old Baltimorean David Armstrong Jr., represents the participants affected by the prevalence of lead dust. The Institute's scientists, Armstrong's father said in a press conference, failed to inform the Armstrong family of the context of the experiment. The family remained ignorant until years later, when a medical examination revealed that levels of lead in Armstrong's blood were substantially higher than what is deemed healthy or normal – higher than they had been before the Armstrongs moved into the new home pursuant to the experiment, according to an interview recorded in the New York Times.
The ignorance, however, was unilateral, the lawsuit states. For the duration of the two-year experiment, the Institute conducted periodical blood tests on the children living in the contaminated homes, but failed to disclose the results of these tests to their subjects.
Moreover, the suit maintains that the study was provisionally but inherently racist and classist.
"For this study, KKI selected children and their parents who were predominantly from a lower economic strata and minorities," the court document reads.
Murphy could not be reached for comment; Armstrong's home phone has been temporarily disconnected.
Welker says that the plaintiff's legal brief is, "full of erroneous information that is being asserted as fact." She cites the Environmental Protection Agency's two-year follow-up report of the experiment, published in 1997, which delineates the study's stipulations and procedures. The report includes letters sent during the study to the parents of children in the experiment, providing insight into the undertakings and results of the experiment.
Recent "inflammatory" press, she said, has misled the general public.
The Institute is no stranger to the contention it currently faces. In 2001, a similar lawsuit, Grimes vs. Kennedy Krieger Institute, prompted a similar public and legal backlash. In addition to the suit's incendiary media coverage, the Maryland Court of Appeals compared the experiment to "Nazi science" and its subjects to "mine-shaft canaries."
The court later recanted its statements.
If the lawsuit comes to fruition the University could be implicated, as Hopkins is required to approve all projects and studies that Kennedy Krieger conducts.
