End Medical Experimentation on Prisoners Now
By Silja J.A. Talvi
One of the most powerful movies ever to be made about the Holocaust was
the 2003 made-for-TV movie, Out of the Ashes, which highlighted the
sickening crucible faced by medical professionals held captive in the
Third Reich's torture-and-killing camps.
Medical experimentation on Jewish and Roma (Gypsy) women was one of Dr.
Josef Mengele's favorite forms of entertainment. In the movie, Dr.
Gisella Perl (Christine Lahti) faces an ethical crisis when she is
forced to comfort a young pregnant Roma woman and then stand by and
watch as Mengele, the Angel of Death, marks up and slices open her
stomach without the benefit of anesthesia. Mengele's sadistic
detachment as he walks away from the remains of the dead woman and her
fetus is agonizingly contrasted with Perl's helplessness and trauma.
Perl's story is real. Millions died, and thousands were experimented
on (and then usually murdered) in the name of the Nazi "science" of
eugenics. And it is because of such treatment that in 1947, the
Nuremberg Code spelled out an unequivocal position on the
experimentation of people in captivity: The human subject of medical
experimentation "should have legal capacity to give consent: should
be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without
the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress,
over-reaching or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion."
Strange thing about this country of ours-we always seem to be able to
justify the "legitimate" exceptions to international law and
agreements.
From the '40s through the early '70s, the United States officially
sanctioned the use of prisoners in medical experiments, including the
injection of typhoid fever, herpes, malaria, TB and a host of sexually
transmitted diseases. In the name of science, doctors have dosed
prisoners with LSD, placed them in extreme isolation to develop "mind
control" techniques, and, in Washington State between 1963 and 1973,
radiated their testicles and then sliced them open. (This last case
brought about one of the few successful lawsuits by prisoners against
medical experimentation.)
In 1976, things seemed to change for the better. The National
Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and
Behavioral Research released a scathing report that led to new
protections of human research subjects. The specific protections for
prisoners, in a section known as Subpart C, accompanied similar
protections for the disabled, children and other vulnerable
populations.
Now, things may be changing again to allow for more medical
experimentation on prisoners. In August, the influential Institute of
Medicine (IOM), presented a report, "Ethical Considerations for
Research Involving Prisoners," to federal officials that recommended
increasing research on prison populations. Such research, the report
said, provided a way of "improving the health of prisoners and the
conditions in which they live." In an August 21 editorial, USA Today
heartily agreed.
The report also raised valid concerns about consent, safeguards,
prisoner privacy and access to adequate health care while in prison. It
also called for the expansion of the definition of "prisoners" to
include all of the nearly 7 million persons under some form of adult
correctional supervision.
The IOM said that "respect for persons and justice should still be
the basis for the conduct and regulation of prisoners today." In
reaction, a New York Times editorial two days later observed that:
"The country should move slowly on this issue. The savage and
dishonorable legacy of drug testing in prison makes it imperative that
any change be carried out carefully, with maximum transparency and
concern for inmate safety."
But the United States has already been moving far too slowly on this
issue. A 1978 federal regulation stated that prisoners can participate
in federally-funded research only if the "experiment poses no more
than 'minimal' risk," which it defined as a "risk of physical
or psychological harm that is no greater in probability and severity
than that ordinarily encountered in the daily lives, or in the routine
medical, dental or psychological examinations of healthy persons."
While that would seem to make a certain amount of sense, federal
oversight and monitoring of medical experimentation has been incredibly
sloppy and disorganized, even according to those who have been
responsible for that oversight. "What we've got from the regulatory
standpoint is a mess," said Dr. Thomas Puglisi, the former director
of compliance for the Office of Protection from Research Risks-now
the Office of Human Research Protections (OHRP)-at a medical research
summit in March 2001. "I couldn't say that when I worked for the
federal government, but I can say that now."
And it's worth noting that the only national oversight is of clinical
trials in prisons that receive federal funds. Pharmaceutical companies
that want to fund their own studies have no oversight body outside of
what a prison or state might deem minimally necessary. A national
database of medical experimentation on prisoners does not exist.
Research studies don't even always end up being
published-particularly when they fail, sometimes causing serious
injury or death to their human subjects.
These are among the most severe obstacles facing journalists who try to
find out more about what's going on, as I discovered while pursuing a
January 2002 cover story for In These Times, "The Prison as
Laboratory."
In investigating that story, I found that the number of experimental
studies on youth and adults in correctional facilities was increasing.
Many of the studies clearly and egregiously violated the existing
regulations on "minimal" risk to their subjects, according to FOIA
documents I received from the OHRP.
Simply put, medical experimentation on prisoners in the United States
never went away. Researchers just got savvier about keeping their
prison studies out of the public eye, often turning to pharmaceutical
funding, which allows them to experiment with as little notice,
oversight or intervention as possible.
Last year, the OHRP Secretary's Advisory Committee on Human Research
Protections (SACHRP) asked its Subpart C subcommittee (addressing
prisoner safeguards) to determine whether existing regulations were
still "adequate," as well as to investigate the prevalence of
medical testing on prisoners.
In the internal document submitted by that subcommittee to SACHRP, more
than 1,000 studies related to prisoners or incarceration came up as
"hits" on a PUBMED database search. Of the 79 studies that appeared
to be conducted entirely in prison settings, 63 percent had to do with
socio-behavioral research revolving around substance abuse, mental
illness and disease risk behaviors.
The report noted the lack of real, centralized information on medical
testing on prisoners, and added "much of the research in correctional
settings is graduate student research of uncertain quality."
Medical testing in prisons should be brought to a halt-at the very
least until quality prison health care for every single inmate is a
reality. Genuine preventative and interventionist care for people
outside of prison who cannot afford medical insurance should also be a
priority.
"Before prisoners can freely make decisions about their medical care
and treatment they first must have access to medical care and treatment
that meets with community standards," says Paul Wright, editor of
Prison Legal News. "Every day prisoners around the country are dying
of medical neglect because they are not provided with simple, known and
available medical care. It is laughable to think that somehow
cutting-edge medical treatment is suddenly going to be made available
to prisoners. The people carrying out the drug testing have a fiduciary
duty to enrich their shareholders and employers, not provide the best
medical care for prisoners."
In the current system, prisoners' lives are already endangered. In
light of this country's legacy of medically abusing captive
populations-and to honor the memory, intent and purpose of the
creation of the Nuremberg Code-prison experimentation simply needs to
come to an end.
Silja J.A. Talvi is a senior editor at In These Times, an investigative
journalist and essayist with credits in many dozens of newspapers and
magazines nationwide, including The Nation, Salon, Santa Fe Reporter,
Utne, and the Christian Science Monitor. She is at work on a book about
women in prison (Seal Press/Avalon).
=A9 2006 In These Times
____________________________________________________________________
Prisoner happily tested on in the US, Chinese Prisoners cut up for body
parts that westerner are quite happy to purchase, unborn human life
butchered for parts, don't think it will not happen to those that are
left behind who turn to God after the rapture.
Revelation 13
1And the dragon stood on the shore of the sea.
The Beast out of the Sea
And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. He had ten horns and seven
heads, with ten crowns on his horns, and on each head a blasphemous
name. 2The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of
a bear and a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave the beast his
power and his throne and great authority. 3One of the heads of the
beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been
healed. The whole world was astonished and followed the beast. 4Men
worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and
they also worshiped the beast and asked, "Who is like the beast? Who
can make war against him?"
5The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and
to exercise his authority for forty-two months. 6He opened his mouth to
blaspheme God, and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those
who live in heaven. 7He was given power to make war against the saints
and to conquer them. And he was given authority over every tribe,
people, language and nation. 8All inhabitants of the earth will worship
the beast-all whose names have not been written in the book of life
belonging to the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world.
9He who has an ear, let him hear.
10If anyone is to go into captivity,
into captivity he will go.
If anyone is to be killed with the sword,
with the sword he will be killed. This calls for patient
endurance and faithfulness on the part of the saints.
The Beast out of the Earth
11Then I saw another beast, coming out of the earth. He had two horns
like a lamb, but he spoke like a dragon. 12He exercised all the
authority of the first beast on his behalf, and made the earth and its
inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed.
13And he performed great and miraculous signs, even causing fire to
come down from heaven to earth in full view of men. 14Because of the
signs he was given power to do on behalf of the first beast, he
deceived the inhabitants of the earth. He ordered them to set up an
image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived.
15He was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so
that it could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to
be killed. 16He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor,
free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead,
17so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the
name of the beast or the number of his name.
18This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the
number of the beast, for it is man's number. His number is 666.
End times:=20
http://mart1963.tripod.com/index.htm
.
|
