SHOULD people ever be deliberately exposed to pesticides to discover how toxic they are? Many campaigners say no, but rules announced by the US Environmental Protection Agency on 7 September only ban children and pregnant women from being used as subjects in studies conducted by or for the EPA.
The new rules commit the EPA to setting up ethical guidelines for other studies on human subjects. But it might still accept studies that do not follow the ethical guidelines if they are conducted by third parties and were not intended to be used by the EPA. Some pesticide manufacturers have…
