A COMPANY that is testing a controversial blood substitute for accident victims has run into trouble for allegedly misrepresenting a researcher.
Northfield Laboratories of Evanston, Illinois, is running a trial of PolyHeme, which is made from haemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying pigment in blood. It is designed to be used in an emergency instead of saline and blood transfusions but the trial has attracted criticism from medical ethicists because unconscious trauma patients cannot give informed consent (New Scientist, 24 April 2004, p 20).
The latest row follows a 22 February article in The Wall Street Journal, which described 10 heart…
