Cristina Belmonte was in good health until the day she died taking part in a medical experiment she didn’t know about.
Without her consent, she was enrolled in an emergency medicine study being conducted by the University of Texas Southwestern Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas.
The paramedics that treated her used a different kind of ventilation than the standard method as part of an emergency medicine study, and her husband, Manuel, fears that may have led to her death.
Controversial studies of emergency medical devices and techniques can often only be field tested in situations where neither the patient nor their family is able to express consent.
It wasn’t until seven weeks after her death that Manuel Belmonte received a letter from the University of Texas Southwestern (UTSW) alerting him to his wife’s involvement in the study.