25/12/2007

HUMAN EXPERIMENTS IN THE USA (2)

Yup, I know its late on Xmas day – and we’re all supposed to wearing our hedonist hats – but when the hell did capitalism ever take a day off robbing us or murdering us. Anyway, I digress, the previous article had me researching more into the subject of human experimentation and the www certainly throws up a lot of info- perhaps a fraction of what is on record. One thing I unearthed is that the US government seemingly has the right to experiment on its citizens without them knowing it, but I’m unsure if this has been tested in the US Supreme Court, though I somehow doubt it. Check out:

CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WARFARE PROGRAMME

"The use of human subjects will be allowed for the testing of chemical and biological agents by the U.S. Department of Defense, accounting to Congressional committees with respect to the experiments and studies."

"The Secretary of Defense [may] conduct tests and experiments involving the use of chemical and biological [warfare] agents on civilian populations [within the United States]."

SOURCE:
Public Law 95-79, Title VIII, Sec. 808, July 30, 1977, 91 Stat. 334.
In U.S. Statutes-at-Large, Vol. 91, page 334, you will find Public Law 95-79.

Public Law 97-375, title II, Sec. 203(a)(1), Dec. 21, 1982, 96 Stat. 1882.
In U.S. Statutes-at-Large, Vol. 96, page 1882, you will find Public Law 97-375.

It seems many, desperate to earn a few bucks, will literally sell themselves to the drug and chemical testing companies for peanuts. Thus, back in 1998, many Nebraskan college students answered an advert in their college newspaper which stated they could "earn extra money" by volunteering for a study. They were given a lengthy consent form to sign (which none read) and got a bottle of pills to take home.

The pills were made by Dow chemical and the trial sought to prove that their top cockroach killing ingredient (chlorpyrifos) in Raid (pictured) was safe.

Yup, these dozy, though impecunious, college students were ingesting pesticides for the Dow Chemical Corporation. Oh yes, and earning $460.00 for the pleasure.

The story was briefly covered in Time Magazine. From the article:

‘Since 1997 pesticide makers have submitted more than a dozen human studies to the EPA. What has never been established, however, is whether it is acceptable—legally or ethically—to conduct clinical trials that offer no potential benefit to participants (other than monetary gain) and could end up harming individuals in the name of public health.’

And:

‘Meanwhile, chemical companies could still be quietly conducting human trials. ‘There's no telling because there's no system for tracking studies that aren't federally funded," says Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, which opposes the pesticide tests. "There's no protocol on how they should be conducted. We're talking about the wild, wild West here.”’

A bit more searching and Wired Science back in August reported

“A common pesticide, re-approved by the EPA in 2001, sickens farm workers, say unions and activists who will file a lawsuit against the agency today, reports the Associated Press.

“ ….The EPA agreed to look at these results because they didn't have money to do the testing themselves and because, under Bush-picked agency head and former tobacco industry pet scientist Stephen Johnson, testing chemicals on humans isn't as inhumanly unethical as it used to be.

Chlorpyrifos was also found at unusually high levels in cancer victims in Churchill, Nevada, the location of a controversial "cancer cluster in which 17 kids were found to have been diagnosed with leukaemia

I wonder how many of those students who took part in the Nebraska trial are still with us today?

And, looking at the historical data on human experimentation in the previous article, don’t be misled into thinking this just started in the 20th century. Here’s just a cursory glance at human experimentation.

1718 George I offers free pardons to any inmates of Newgate Prison who agree to be inoculated with infectious small pox in a variolation experiment..

1796 Edward Jenner injects healthy eight-year-old James Phillips first with cowpox then three months later with smallpox and is hailed as discoverer of smallpox vaccine.

1845-1849 J. Marion Sims, the "Father of Gynaecology" in the United States, conducts gynaecological experiments on slaves in South Carolina.

1865 French physiologist Claude Bernard publishes "Introduction to the Study of Human Experimentation," advising: "Never perform an experiment which might be harmful to the patient even though highly advantageous to science or the health of others.

1874 Cincinnati physician Roberts Bartholow conducts brain surgery experiments on Mary Rafferty, a 30 year-old domestic servant dying of an infected ulcer.

1891 Prussian State legislates that a treatment for tuberculosis cannot be given to prisoners without their consent.

1892 Albert Neisser injects women with serum from patients with Syphilis, infecting half of them.

1896 Dr. Arthur Wentworth performs spinal taps on 29 children at Children's Hospital in Boston to determine if the procedure is harmful.

1897 Italian bacteriologist Sanarelli injects five subjects with bacillus searching for a causative agent for yellow fever.

1900 Walter Reed injects 22 Spanish immigrant workers in Cuba with the agent for yellow fever paying them $100 if they survive and $200 if they contract the disease.

1906 Dr. Richard Strong, a professor of tropical medicine at Harvard, experiments with cholera on prisoners in the Philippines, killing thirteen.

1915 U.S. Public Health Office induces pellagra in twelve Mississippi prisoners. All the prisoners are, however, volunteers and after the experiment they are cured (with proper diet) and released from prison.

1919-1922 Testicular transplant experiments on five hundred prisoners at San Quentin

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