October 09, 2016
The University of Pennsylvania was granted summary judgment in a federal case last week over the death of a neuroscience researcher whose family filed a lawsuit claiming he was enrolled in a clinical trial that exposed him to dangerous levels of radiation without his informed consent.
The lawsuit, originally filed in 2013 in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia, argued that 47-year-old Jeffrey H. Ware died of gliosarcoma in 2011 after developing the brain cancer during his research into the effects of radiation animals, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. Ware's research was intended to discover preventive measures against the development of cancer in astronauts.
In the lawsuit, Ware's estate claimed Penn did not provide lab employees with proper protective equipment and dosimeter badges to accurately track exposure to radiation.
Once Ware developed the brain cancer, his family further argued, the university enrolled him in a clinical trial that inflicted damaging side effects on him well after he had any realistic chance of remission. His decision to participate was adversely guided by impaired cognitive abilities stemming from his cancer and two brain surgeries, the family argued, and thus not informed consent.
Penn eventually managed to have the case transferred from Common Pleas Court to federal court, where the plaintiff was required to prove that Ware's radiation exposure met a specific threshold equivalent to the effects of a catastrophe at a nuclear power plant.
Ware's family has filed a notice of appeal arguing that the Price-Anderson Act — the law Penn used to have the case transferred applies only to commercial and government nuclear power plants and not research laboratories. A worker's compensation claim filed by the family remains on hold.
