Liam Scheff, a journalist, first broke the story of foster children enrolled in drug trials and given HIV drugs, in some cases without permission of the human parent. The New York Post and the BBC did news articles following their own investigations.
Because the children were foster children, the institution, acting as a substitute parent, could enroll the children in the drug trials.
In some cases, the childen were taken from parents because of refusal by the parent to give HIV drugs to the children, effectively making the children wards of the state.The link to the Alliance for Human Research Protection is a letter to U. S. Health and Human Dervices Department, contending that government rules for drug trials involving wards of the state were not followed, triggering two investigations.
New York State Department of Health visited ICC in response to the articles. Its internal memo, very supportive of ICC, is provided below, and makes no mention of the past drug trials, though they were acknowledged by ICC's sponsor, the New York Catholic archdiocese, and are shown on the www.clinicaltrials.gov website of the National Institutes of Health.
In a separate letter, available from the ICC link below, the head of the AIDS Institute does acknowledge and defend the past tests.
Mr. Scheff contends in the NY Press item below that ICC is still listed as a recruitment site for HIV drug studies.