Eight cancer patients and relatives sue over melanoma study

TULSA, Okla. (AP) -- Eight cancer patients and their relatives are suing cancer researchers and University of Oklahoma officials for allegedly misleading them about an experimental vaccine and jeopardizing their safety.

The eight patients -- six of whom are alive and two deceased -- are from Tulsa, Muskogee and Missouri.

The lawsuit filed on Monday by a New Jersey law firm alleged that OU professor Dr. J. Michael McGee had developed a melanoma vaccine and "considered it his goal to treat patients with a product he considered to be a cure for cancer."

But his goal disregarded federal regulations, OU officials and "international standards governing the conduct of human clinical trials," the lawsuit alleges.

More than 90 patients participated in the study. Many of them have described McGee as a dedicated scientist and a compassionate physician.

McGee has not spoken publicly about his research, but his attorney, Lynn Mattson was interviewed earlier this month, a story in Tuesday's editions of the Tulsa World said.

At the time, Mattson said McGee was doing original research that may be of great value to cancer patients. But Mattson said OU's procedures for monitoring research were lacking.

The lawsuit does alleges that living patients and Okmulgee toddler Sydnee Robertson, who was born while his mother participated in the research, "are at increased risk of disease and harm."

Along with McGee, defendants include the Immunex Corp., a Seattle pharmaceutical company that manufactured one of the experimental drugs used in the study.

Other defendants are two of the sites where patients received injections -- a cancer center in Springfield, Mo., and a hospital in Newport Beach, Calif. St. John Medical Center in Tulsa, which the lawsuit refers to as a "co-sponsor" of the melanoma study, is also named as a defendant.

McGee and St. John had advertised the study, "including buying time for a commercial designed to look like a newscast in which the vaccine was represented to be a cure for cancer," the lawsuit states. This is a reference to St. John's Pulseline, a segment that aired on a Tulsa TV station.

St. John officials had no immediate comment late Monday.

University of Oklahoma President David Boren; Dr. Harold Brooks, the former dean of the Tulsa campus of the OU College of Medicine; Edward Wortham Jr., former director of the Office of Research at the Health Sciences Center; and Dr. Thomas Broughan, surgery department chairman at OU-Tulsa, also are named in the lawsuit.

Several members of the former OU-Tulsa Institutional Review Board -- which is supposed to monitor the safety of research -- are named as defendants.

University officials had not yet seen the lawsuit on Monday.

"In general, we find it inappropriate to comment when litigation is pending," OU spokeswoman Catherine Bishop said Monday.

OU officials have said in the past that the well-being of the patients is their first concern.

Brooks and Wortham have filed a lawsuit of their own, alleging that OU made them into scapegoats to cover up larger research compliance problems at the university.