[1] He ran many experiments involving the injection of live cancer cells into human subjects, without disclosing that they were cancer cells, and using subjects with questionable ability to consent, such as incarcerated people and senile patients in long-term care at a hospital.
[4] He joined the faculty of Cornell's medical college in 1951 and was eventually promoted to full professor.
[5][6] In 1963, doctors Avir Kagan, David Leichter and Perry Fersko of Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital objected to the lack of consent in his experiments and reported him to the Regents of the University of the State of New York which found him guilty of fraud, deceit, and unprofessional conduct, and in the end he was placed on probation for a year.
[13] This work had some good results and was also reported in The New York Times, but some people he injected got severe cases of West Nile fever; he went on to do further research to see if he could "train" the virus to kill cancer without the common side effects of chemotherapy.
[13] In 1971, Southam left his positions at Memorial Sloan Kettering and Cornell to become the head of The Division of Medical Oncology at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and a professor of medicine at Thomas Jefferson University Medical College; he held these positions until the end of his career in 1979.