Animal Blood Used in Human Patients? Suspicions Raised Over Unethical Transfusion Experiments at Japanese Medical Schools During Sino-Japanese War

Suspicions have been raised that various medical schools in Japan before and during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) conducted unethical experiments on patients, including children, by injecting animal blood or incompatible blood types, in an effort to support the accumulation of medical knowledge for the Japanese military.

Kyodo News reported on the 9th that Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, Kyushu Imperial University (now Kyushu University), and Kumamoto Medical College (now Kumamoto University) were confirmed to have conducted human experiments by injecting stored blood long after collection, incompatible blood types, and xenogeneic blood from animals such as horses, cows, and goats into patients.

Kyodo News, together with Yoshinaka Takeshi, a clinical professor at the Kyoto University Faculty of Medicine who researches war and medical issues, confirmed these findings based on papers related to the experiments conducted from before the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War through the wartime period, which were published in medical journals at the time.

At Kumamoto Medical College, a man died after receiving a transfusion of horse blood following brain surgery.

A 9-year-old boy suffering from osteomyelitis also died shortly after being injected with plasma that had been stored for 21 days.

In a case where a Japanese university researcher visited a hospital in Nanjing, China, and administered stored horse blood, there was also one fatality.

At Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, there was even a case where dried blood was injected into a patient's body.

Professor Yoshinaka analyzed that while the experiments at the time may have had the purpose of developing treatments, they appeared to have been conducted with methods in mind to treat wounded soldiers on battlefields where securing blood was difficult by utilizing long-term stored blood or animal blood.

He pointed out that medical staff at the time "seem to have lowered their psychological and ethical barriers regarding unethical human experiments in the process of cooperating with the war effort."

Previously, Kyodo News reported on documents recording that an instructor at the Japanese Army Medical School repeatedly conducted experiments injecting animal blood into humans during the Sino-Japanese War, raising suspicions that xenogeneic blood transfusion experiments were carried out by the Japanese military in China.

(Photo provided by Yonhap News TV, Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.