ASU disputed Tuesday the claims made by members of the Havasupai tribe that researchers used members' blood, handprints and medical information for unauthorized research.
"Arizona State University disputes the allegations made in a lawsuit filed by 52 individual members of the Havasupai Tribe and will vigorously defend itself," ASU said in a statement released Tuesday.
The lawsuit, filed Friday in Coconino County Superior Court, charges that a lack of oversight by ASU's Institutional Review Board allowed researchers to conduct unauthorized research on blood samples from the Havasupai tribal community.
The complaint alleges that ASU researchers have spent about 15 years laying a trail of missing or destroyed blood samples, illegally obtained medical records and misused handprints.
Havasupai tribal members filed the $25 million claim against ASU, the Arizona Board of Regents and three professors.
About 400 blood samples from the tribe were gathered in 1989 for the stated purpose of studying diabetes.
In 2003, the University commissioned attorney Stephen Hart to conduct an independent study in response to questions raised by a Havasupai tribal member about extra studies done on the samples.
The University statement also said that the investigation was used to "return the blood samples to the original donors or their families."
Robert Lyttle and Albert Flores, co-counsels for the tribe, filed the complaint based on Hart's report.
"It doesn't look favorable to ASU when you look at this report," Lyttle said.
ASU anthropology professor John Martin and Therese Markow, a UA ecology and evolutionary biology professor and the director of UA's Center for Insect Science, initiated the Diabetes Project with the tribe in 1989.
The Institutional Review Board was negligent, Lyttle and Flores concluded from the Hart investigation.
Hart's study indicated that Markow had a significant interest in studies about schizophrenia and enlisted the help of University of Minnesota epidemiology professor Chris Armstrong.
Theories exist that schizophrenia can be traced back to a single shaman in the tribe, which the report said increases the research interest in the Havasupai.
Armstrong was an ASU graduate student at the time and said in the report that he had tried to alert ASU about problems with the study during the mid-1990s, but those complaints went unanswered.
He said he felt guilty.
"I lied to these people," Armstrong told investigators .
Armstrong said he took up heavy binge drinking to deal with the stress. The report also said Armstrong was sentenced on drug charges in 1999.
The researchers also allegedly took 36 handprints from the subjects to study Native American inbreeding in 1992, according to the complaint. Again, the subjects allegedly were not warned that the prints were taken for any purpose beyond diabetes research.
The attorneys said the researchers violated federal informed-consent laws and failed to report changes to their research program.
Additionally, they failed to obtain approval for changes from the Institutional Review Board.
"Those rules are there for a purpose, and that is to respect human subjects during research," Lyttle said. "Those rules were violated."
After obtaining the samples, Markow and Martin allegedly conducted "an illegal and unauthorized search" of more than 100 medical charts at the Supai Health Clinic in Supai, Ariz. The searches occurred after the clinic closed for the night.
The purpose of the search was "to look for signs of schizophrenia among the Havasupai people," according to the complaint.
The researchers also performed unauthorized studies on inbreeding and schizophrenia, according to the complaint. They also attempted to verify scientific theories that ancient Native Americans migrated to North America from Asia.
The ASU migration research disrespected the tribal members' beliefs that their ancestors were born from the Grand Canyon, according to the suit.
Reach the reporter at nicole.saidi@asu.edu.
