US research 'endangered Amazon villagers'

Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro and Sarah Boseley
Tuesday December 20, 2005
The Guardian

Health officials in Brazil have launched an investigation after claims that at least 10 impoverished Brazilians from an Amazon village may have contracted malaria while being used as human "guinea pigs" during a study by an American university.

The $1m (£570,000) research project, funded by the National Institutes of Health and conducted by the University of Florida, was being carried out in three villages on the Matapi river in the northern state of Amapa. It intended to study feeding patterns among mosquitoes over a four-year period in order to help control malaria outbreaks.