A researcher who directed a study by the Kennedy Krieger Institute into methods of reducing lead in inner-city homes disputed yesterday assertions by the state's highest court that his methods were ethically flawed.
Dr. Mark Farfel, who has studied the city's lead paint problem for two decades, said his study was in no way comparable to the notorious Tuskegee study of untreated syphilis in which government doctors withheld treatment from ailing men so they could study the disease's progression. The state Court of Appeals made the comparison in an opinion it handed down Thursday.
Instead, Farfel said he and his colleague, Dr. Julian Chisholm Jr., were trying to reverse a longtime pattern of neglect in which cities did nothing while families lived in lead-contaminated homes that were known to be poisoning children. Chisholm died last month.
"Society was already doing a Tuskegee experiment," Farfel said in an interview yesterday. "Very little if anything was happening to remove lead while children were being poisoned."
On Thursday, the Court of Appeals ordered trials for lawsuits in which two families charge that scientists failed to warn them that they faced a continuing hazard of lead exposure despite renovations made on the houses. The families also contended that they were not advised in a timely manner of their children's rising blood-lead levels.
The study, which took place in 1993 and 1994, was an attempt to learn how effectively different degrees of home repairs reduced a child's exposure to lead.
Farfel said the study was done in response to older and cruder methods of lead abatement that made the problem worse.
For the study, researchers recruited about 100 families who lived in two-story rowhouses and divided them into five groups. More than $1 million was provided by the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
In three of the groups, homes were given varying degrees of repair ranging in price from $1,050 to $6,000. The families were living in the homes when the renovations began.
In another group, families moved into homes that had been subjected to a more complete renovation while vacant, Farfel said. A fifth group, used as a control, consisted of modern houses that were built when lead was outlawed.
Yesterday, Farfel and Dr. Gary Goldstein, chief executive of the Kennedy Krieger Institute, declined to comment on the allegations made by the two families who filed the lawsuits.
Speaking generally, Farfel said lead-dust levels declined on average in homes that were repaired, though to a greater degree in the homes where the repairs were more complete. It was morally defensible, he said, to offer some families more modest repairs that could be expected to bring about less dramatic results - saying they, too, benefited.
"We're a lot better off than we were 10 years ago when we didn't know what to do," Farfel said. "Look out the window at all those homes. Should we just allow people to live there?"
