Research ban for surgeons after probiotic experiment

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22099-research-ban-for-surgeons-after-probiotic-experiment.html

It sounds like a particularly lurid episode of the TV medical drama House: in a last-ditch attempt to help people with advanced brain cancer, their surgical wounds are deliberately infected with "probiotic" bacteria to stimulate their immune systems into fighting the tumours.

Rather than ending with miraculous recoveries, however, this incident led to two surgeons at the University of California, Davis, being banned from conducting research on human volunteers.

News of the surgeons' reprimand, revealed by the Sacramento Bee newspaper, has alarmed bioethicists. "There are a lot of red flags," says Jonathan Kimmelman of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, who studies the ethics of clinical research.

The case raises tough questions about the standards of evidence that should be met before experimental therapies are tested in people – even those with just weeks to live who may feel that they have nothing to lose.