As more research moves outside U.S., are we still exploiting the poor?
Article Source: msnbc.com
from:msnbc.comHorrific medical tests of past raise concerns for today
Seeded on Fri Oct 1, 2010 5:03 PM EDT (msnbc.com)
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And we wonder why the United States is one of (if not the) the most hated nation's in the world...by both 3rd world countries and developed countries.
Our Corpocracy is all about exploiting the "small people" to the benefit of those with weatlh...whether it be medical experimentation in Guatamala or the back door draft to staffing our military with grunts to fight the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan - for the rich Americans and to preserve their democracy. The poor in America are NOT free. Just holding elections does not make us a standing democracy!...unless you rely on Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity's twisted definition.
What a country....no wonder Canada is making hard for Americans to emigrate....if they let too many of us across the border, we might contaminate them as well.
If we are so bad, then please leave(assuming you actually live here) ... please go to Russia, or China or South America or anyplace else and see how the whatever-'ocracy' treats their little people. We have our sins here in the US ... but you can read about them on the front page of the paper and fight against it. There is a reason that the line to get in to this country is 10 miles long and the line to get out is 10 feet long.
go2goal~
Don't worry about Ken-2288... He's an American Exceptionalism cheerleader. I hear you loud and clear and I'm not going anywhere. I wore the uniform and put my life on the line for Uncle Sam and liberty enough years to be free to criticize my "national family" without some psuedo-patriot telling me to move to Russia---especially when something like this abomination is revealed 60 yrs. later!
You leave big mouth. This person brings up legitimate complaints in a country that is supposed to protect free speech, and all you can say is the super cliched response of "Please leave!" waa waa ... you big baby.
Maybe in your life the only answer you can come up with for seemingly unsolvable problems is to simply run away, but for the rest of the world who actually have a backbone we stay and try to work it out. Only a spineless jellyfish of a human would suggest to another American to leave. Loser. STFUB4IS4170NY0U2F@c3. Bozak licker
History is full of atrocities committed by white protestant Americans and our Government. Sadly the Wasp power structure still fights to keep these atrocities out of our museums and history books.
Nationalist fundamentalism is as dangerous as Religious fundamentalism. The whole "love it or leave it" line spewed by the right wing American exceptionalist crowd is so truly UNAMERICAN in it's natural it is sickening!
@Ken,
Jingo Bells! Jingo Bells! Jingo all the way!
You mean that's not the reason why the poor and uneducated class of people exist throughout the world? So that they can be exploited by the ruling class. Every civilization has done so since the beginning of time, so what would compel Americans to do differently.
Ken...would you be ok if you went down to the va and they put some hep. c in your drink just to see what would happen? yeah i guess not
History is full of atrocities committed by EVERY race, EVERY nation, EVERY government, and every religious persuasion.
The same kind of hatred you speak with is the very seed and element needed to produce more of the same.
Stop pointing fingers and be different.
there will be revolution here in the US someday. The void between the "haves" (the upper 10% of the population with 90% of the money) and the "have nots" (the rest of the population who has 10% of the wealth) will widen. The government who is made up and run by the "haves" (when was last time a NON-millionaire was elected as a governor or high ranking federal position?) has no choice but to "cow tow" to these special people. Banks, insurance companies, pharmaceuticals, Wall Street run this country. For crying out load, Chase is the world's 2nd largest bank with almost 3 trillion in assets. HSBC is even larger and yet Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will end up supplementing their losses in the foreclosure debacle. Our politicians were bought and sold 20 years ago. We need real leadership not "professional" politicians. The media is owned by millionaires, our commentators Limbaugh, Hannity et.al. are millionaires. They are not like us the middle class and as long as their pockets are full NOTHING will ever change.
How can one believe these stories when no proof is presented. Simply saying the government has issued an apology isn't enough. Was the government official one of the bash America people? Who was that person and how did that person come across that information? How do we know that it's not one more political lie? Who did the experiments, names, dates, and places?
Come on! If you don't do this, we'll know that it is simply one more lame-stream media lie to promote your agenda.
Isn't it interesting that this came out when the Dems are having a bad time at the polls? An accident? Somehow I doubt it.
OK, first of all, it is "kowtow". Second, of course we should apologize. Even though this happened 60 years ago, it is an abomination that American researchers were responsible for and American dollars paid for and the American government (National Institutes of Health) supported.
There is nothing political about this, none of the news reports have mentioned anything about a political party being responsible only the researchers and the institutional mindset of medical research in general.
There is no conspiracy either. Come on people, take off your aluminum foil hats and join the rest of us out in the daylight!
This is nothing new. The US is still doing human testing trials. Haven't you noticed all the drug recalls the past few years.............they WAIT until people start dying from medications BEFORE they test them and check whether they are safe. Take a look at the FDA, and see how they wait years and a few thousand deaths before they pull medications off the market. It's all about the MONEY, and continuing the flow of excess dollars into Big Pharma. They have a pill for that..............
Are apologies also made for what has not yet been uncovered or disclosed to the public arena?
The Associates xP
Of course we're still exploiting the poor! The GOP has been quietly and surreptitiously stoking the notion that the poor are a burden to the rich white "entrepreneurs" who supposedly built and protect this nation from some sort of "dark people" ruination and the Tea Party exploits the fear of "poor blacks and Hispanics" by an aging, privileged white population on a daily basis.
Yeah but it was democrats that were in power long before and after the experiments were done... how is that argument holding up now?!
jabberjaws,
Your comment does not really address Durer's.
The idea that the Democratic party of the 1930-40s was as racist as the Republicans does not address the fact the the current GOP is continuing with this racist ideology.
It is not the Democrats today exploiting the racist views of uneducated whites in the US, it is the GOP. It is the GOP and their racist fear mongering that allow more of these atrocities to happen in the name of the USA. It is shameful!
A funny thing has happened to the two major political parties during the last century. The democrats, which used to be mostly racist reactionary conservative southerners have become dominated by the liberal north, and the republicans have traded places with them.
Durer is right. I couldn't believe how the Limbaughs and Hannitys out there decided that the blame for the failing economy was to be put on the poor. People like that should be hung upside down so the blood can flow back to whatever dried up useless brain they may still have.
rudy-361417 said, "Durer is right. I couldn't believe how the Limbaughs and Hannitys out there decided that the blame for the failing economy was to be put on the poor."
You obviously made that up and have never watched Hannity nor have you listened to Limbaugh. What a joke! How could you be so foolish as to make a such a complete fool of yourself?
I detest the testing on poor and helpless people but I think testing should be done right here in the US, in the prisons. Specially on those people who are in for life with no parole. What good are these people for? They should be used as lab rats.
JM,
The idea that we turn any group of humans into a sub-human test group is completely antithetical to American Values.
Sociopathic is the only way to describe your statement.
You should go a read some history on the birth of the Nazi human research programs, it all started with criminals and mentally retarded individuals and progressed to other "lesser beings."
JM great idea, SPG64 reasearch has to be done, might as well use our own scum that gets 3 hots and a cot and t.v. and, and, and.
Does this help you? http://www.innocenceproject.org/about/Mission-Statement.php
Are you sure they're all "scum" and expendable?
John,
Well put!
But since there is no such thing as 'morality' or moral standard, then why are we talking about this? Surely science and reason can give us an answer here - since we are all mere rational beings in an evolutionary chain. Perhaps we should have just aborted these people and saved the planet the resources they consumed - right? I'm looking at you scientists and athests.
Are you saying that all scientists aren't moral? Many of them are christian, so they probably have the same morality as other christians.
And speaking of religious morality, it was all created by humans. Each religion in the world has morality. Once you leave the "worship only this one particular god" part of each religious moral code they are all very similar.
Since athiest are humanists at heart, and humans created your religious moral codes, maybe atheists actually have the highest moral code of all. You know, christians waste 4 of 10 commandments on the myth of god. Atheists can jump right to the true moral values.
Ken, Again with the all or nothing rhetoric. Just because some one does not believe in the same creation myths as you does not mean they do not have a moral compass. Jon statements are right on the money with this.
There is no need for religion to be the foundation of moral standards. It need only begin with the golden rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Of course these experiments were done during FRD and Truman terms. Sorry they were democrats - wanna try to bash the right right wing now?
Oh and the then Guatemalan government was very willing and happy to sell of their prison inmates for testing.
So maybe we shouldnt apologize until the Guatemalan government does to the victims of the impreisoned... who probably were to be executed anyway.
You think the government is bad? Just wait for private companies to take over. You'll have absolutely no say in what those private companies do and as a consumer you will absolutely no idea what they actually do. All that matters is that you give them your money for their drugs which were tested on babies in foreign countries who ultimately died, and you won't have a clue.
Anarcho-Capitalism is murdering Democracy.
Now we use our military as test subjects and cover it all with "Classified" and military members are prohibited from suiing under the Feres Doctrine.....even if they find out about what was pulled on them. How many suffered and are still from our Agent Orange escapade?......How many are still suffering or even know about the combining of test vaccines into one shot (changing the properties) for anthrax and nerve agent during the first Gulf war and then giving the company that did it complete amnesty? And has the Government contacted those who received those shots? NO.
And then the government wonders why people don't want their children to get vaccinations and why people don't want to get flu shots . . . . who's to say that 64 years from now the government won't be saying the same about vaccinations and "public health" flu shots . . . . .
I agree with you Estela. People should check the facts behind these viruses, how they originate, and how that shot they line up for isn't going to help.
Ok. I take exception to this premise and we aren't being given enough information, once again, to clear things up.
The "facts" I know are that the US Government willfully injected the two most serious STDs in history to unsuspecting "subjects" before there was any known cure. It is, without question, no less criminal than the type of experimentation the Nazis did on Jews in the 30s/40s.
But, for the media in general and MSNBC, in particular, to question the ethics of American doctors in any general way, as they did on Morning Joe and as they insinuate in this article, I take real issue with.
Was it the military? Was it a precursor of the CDC? Whatever the employees of the government were, that set up the study and gave those shots, they were not "doctors" in the usual sense of the word.
With very few exceptions, I have never known a finer group of men than medical doctors.
Mary,
Well put!
However there was an WASP American exceptional-ism that was so prevalent in American society that acts like these were easily overlooked.
Look at other acts by the US government and WASP power structure things like the distribution of small pox infected blankets by the US Army to Native Americans.
The working to death of Irish indentured servants.
The fact that the US slavery lasted 100 years longer than other European cultures and was followed by an Apartheid system for another 100 years.
The internment of Japanese during WWII.
The list goes on and on and it shows a willingness by the American people, not just the US Government to treat non-WASPs as subspecies.
And your point is?
And you wonder why some of us have ethical questions about cloning, embryos, and some of the genetic experimentation? They talk about manipulating the sex of a baby; what about trying to manipulate its race? Has anyone though this stuff through?
Sorry, "thought." And I guess skin color would be more likely to be manipulated than race. These people thought they were advancing medicine by doing this abominable stuff. I am not saying to hold back science, just to think about some of what we're doing as far as the ethics are concerned-unlike these people did.
How can we be so sure that the government didn't experiment on the African American men considering the way African Americans were treated way back then. I mean if the truth were to be that the U.S. experiment even today on people in the world without fear of reprecussion, would anyone even care?
The torture of POWs was not only accepted by the American right but applauded!
Did your meds wear off?
Outsourced testings are done with insufficient scrutinies and volunteer patients are dying unnecessarily in other countries. Not only unethical, it is a good question whether the data can be trusted.
sounds to me like somone wants to sue now. you just wait and see
Of course, canada, us and england conducted even more horrific mind control experiments on U.S. citizens from all walks of life. The u.s. has yet to apologize to its own people in the 50s and 60s. Of course, area 51 workers were made sick and denied information about what made the sick. U.S. has not apologized to its citizens for that. Perhaps it hasn't apologized to us because that would beg the question "Are they still engaging in similar practices?" It's hard to imagine that there not when were just two years away from Cheney.
Mind control? Area 51? I think you might need to adjust the safety strap on your tin foil hat, the rays seem to be having a rather strong effect.
I have very serious concerns about the commercialization of recent medications. At this point I won't even consider taking anything that is new simply because the manufactures have a proven track record for profit and time to market over safety or properly vetted research. Trust is something in very short supply in this country...
Listen, the Tuskeegee experiment went on beyond FDR and Truman. No excuse for a so called Christian country. And please do not compare other countries because I do no hear them making such bold and pompous statments as American politicians do.
Inexcusable. Period. Why were these experiments not done in a poor European Country? Brown people through the 70's (and later as far as I am concerned) were exposed to inhuman treatment. What about the doctors who mad native americans sterile?
If we keep making up excuses for inexcusable behavior, how will we ever gain the "moral highground" back that you Repubs claim we have. What else can be said except we should be ashamed. Who cares if it was in the past? There are people who are still alive today who knew what was happening.
Apparently you are not aware that the forced sterilization program that was adopted by Hitler was begun in Indiana to make sure that the mentally unfit and morally weak (the poor and the disabled) did not reproduce , and in fact the last forced sterilization was done until the early '70's in Indiana...1972, if memory serves, was the last forced sterilization of a developmentally delayed woman that anyone is admitting to, anyway. I seriously doubt that it was the last, but then I'm a natural skeptic.
How exactly did the government infect the Guatemalans with syphilis? Did they force them to have sex with Blacks?
Your humor missed....
Scientists decided that the immune systems of Black people (Native born Africans) was so strong, that syphillis wouldn't survive. Then some of these monsters wanted to see if (American born Blacks) immune systems were as strong. Now as we are finding out these monsters started testing their theory in South American countries.
My Aunt, a physican and my mother were involved i the tuskegee exxperiment. My aunt belived it was ethical, for the greater good,amd ultimatly life saving. Mom was e records keeper. Runs my blood cold. They were both professionals and educated at Duke and Cornell.
Wow. "The greater good." Always the justification for heinous crimes against humanity.
It was the same justification given by the NAZIs!
If they did this with syphilis and ghonorrhea 60 years ago, I wonder if they moved on to bigger and better things since then.
I've really always wondered where AIDS comes from, maybe that same group that sponsored the good doctor's research might have some answers to that too. Or is that something we will just have to wait to find out in another 60 years?
There is quite a bit of conspiracy theory along those lines, but the HIV virus is genetically very similar to the SIV or Simian Immunodeficiency Virus. Simian means monkey in scientist talk, so we're talking about a disease which has existed in monkeys and then mutated and got transmitted (or perhaps the other way 'round in time sequence) somehow to human hosts.
Now, I suppose you could argue that some unethical scientists somewhere did this intentionally, but I think it is much more likely that through poaching of "bush meat" someone ate an infected monkey and then got sick and passed it on. There are other possible routes of transmission from monkey to human, but I'll not belabor them here.
Oh My God.
Sorry about the typos
Does Josef Mengele ring a bell? All super powers have used Untermensch for experiments, no one is exempt from the "finkle finger of fate", so to speak. Ask the Russians, Viet Cong,Japs, et al. The point was a "pure" military experiment, just how much can we do to the human body and still be serviceable to our needs?...........The Japs,Soviets, and the National Socialists had it down to a science.............literally.......that is the way of the world and it will continue,trust me, I am a Viet Nam vet and have heard it all before............Viele Glueck Menschen!:+)
We don't torture in this country.
Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.
We don't violate the privacy rights of our citizens.
We don't interfere in the politics of other countries.
The air was safe to breath at 9-11 ground zero.
Kennedy was killed by a lone bullet.
The Federal Reserve is a part of our government.
We don't use experimental drugs on the poor.
Sometimes we use experimental drugs on the poor..........but that was a long time ago.
Barry, here's another one.
Clinton DIDN'T inhale when he smoked pot,
Nice to see your humor in all this turmoil.
OK. So, just thinking it through...
the US intentionally poisoned the French with LSD, the Guatemalans and African Americans with Syphilis, Americans with covert nuclear radiation releases, Iraqis and Afghans with depleted uranium, not to mention Native Americans with small pox.
Ummm....tell me again about that CIA report released by Wikileaks that asked what would happen if the US is regarded as an exporter of terrorism?
Make that POOR CAUCASIANS in Appalachia with radiation; how many of my people died enriching uranium for the Manhattan Project? Oh, thy're just poor, white people, out of the mainstream, too bad.
No zzzz, it's not to bad, in fact it's a major part of the problem. ANY group of people that doesn't have voice to defend themselves, or is considered worthless will be taken advantage of. As many have stated in other posts: Only time will tell the extent of Governments experimentation on the worlds population.
This is just another example of why it is unwise to have the government administrating health care.
Read up on what private pharmaceutical companies are doing testing drugs in Africa before you make a statement like that.
Under private industry, this story is just standard practice, but the drugs being tested won't cure anything, just eliminate symptoms.
Health care was not under government administration then and it happened anyway. And most advanced, educated countries with social health care systems are not, to my knowledge, outsourcing drug tests. Guess what? The US is not the best country in the world. Not by a long shot. But you're not evil either. There is still some hope, but I am an optimist.