Iowa House Lawmakers to Hold Hearing on Glenwood Resource Center

DES MOINES, Iowa - Iowa House lawmakers will hold an oversight hearing over accusations of human experiments at Glenwood Resource Center.

Republican House Government Oversight Committee Chair Mary Ann Hanusa of Council Bluffs is working with the Iowa Department of Human Services (DHS) to set a date for the hearing.

Tuesday, Governor Kim Reynolds said she would welcome the involvement of state lawmakers in the issue.

Emails released Monday revealed that state administrators knew about, and signed off on human experiments of intellectually disabled people at Glenwood in 2018.

Reynolds said she was not aware of the experiments until a federal investigation was launched by the Justice Department last November on whether patients were inappropriately used as human subjects for studies involving sexual arousal and pneumonia.

The emails show DHS mental health and disability services administrator Rick Shults approved a software request in May of 2018 for studies on patients.

Shults resigned in January. Reynolds says Shults wasn't fired because an investigation into his actions was still in progress.

Glenwood houses roughly 200 intellectually and physically disabled people at its facility in southwest Iowa.


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