The government was handed a court order Monday to pay damages to the family of a now-deceased woman on whom a public hospital performed a clinical experiment without her consent.
Presiding Judge Kenichi Ido of the Kanazawa District Court said in the ruling, "Doctors' inclusion of the patient in a clinical test without her consent infringed on her right to decide and violated a medical-care contract" with her.
The court awarded 1.65 million yen to the family of the woman, who died in December 1998. The plaintiffs were seeking 10.8 million yen.
According to the ruling, Kanazawa University Hospital in Kanazawa had been conducting clinical tests on ovary cancer patients since 1995 to determine the effectiveness of chemotherapy treatment.
The woman, a resident of Neagari, Ishikawa Prefecture, underwent surgery at the hospital in December 1997. She began receiving chemotherapy the following month because surgery could not remove all her tumors.
Doctors at the hospital included her in the clinical experiment and gave her medication but stopped administering them after seeing no improvement in her condition, the court said.
They tried another form of treatment on her, but she eventually died, it said.