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View Full Version : Even mesue wants to horsewhip the people responsible for this



mesue
05-02-2005, 08:18 PM
And when they are done with that shoot em full of those same experimental drugs. These monsters used and paid for the use of foster children to be used as guinea pigs in drug testing. From what I can gather from the article some of the children were presumed to have HIV. From what i can gather from the article these children who may or may not have been HIV+ were not receiving the standard meds or any kind of treatment instead they were given experimental drugs, this is not a case where they were getting an experimental drug as a last resort, thats all they were getting including the known ones who needed standard treatment. This went on until 2002 in New York City. I provided the start of the story and a link that provides you with a transcipt of an interview in which much more is revealed. I put this on here a long time ago when the story first broke and now they are finally starting an investigation. This is one of those things we all think could not happen here.


http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/02/1348210
New York City's child welfare department opens an investigation into whether they forced HIV positive children in foster care to submit to experimental AIDS drug trials. We speak with the commissioner for New York's Administration for Children's Services, New York City councilman Bill Perkins and Vera Sharav of the Alliance for Human Research Protection. [includes rush transcript]
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Last December, Democracy Now reported that a BBC documentary exposed how the city of New York had been forcing HIV-positive children under its supervision to be used as human guinea pigs in tests for experimental AIDS drug trials.
All of the children in the program were under the legal guidance of the city's child welfare department, the Administration for Children's Services or ACS. Most lived in foster care or independent homes run on behalf of the local authorities and almost all the children were believed to be African-American or Latino.

ACS initially dismissed the allegations as unfounded and stated that the source "appears to be a group of individuals holding the views that HIV does not cause AIDS." But just last week, ACS did an about-face and announced that they will be conducting a review of their policy that was in place the late eighties and nineties, which did force HIV positive children in foster care to submit to clinical drug trials.

schsa
05-03-2005, 10:49 AM
I read the article and I am still not sure if ther is a problem or not here. We have children who may or may not have been HIV positive who may or may not have been involved in clinical studies and no one seems to know exactly what was going on or why.

I think I need more information before I can really say anything.

mesue
05-03-2005, 05:57 PM
Did you read the transcript? while there is just starting to be an investigation there is one thing for sure the drug testing did take place, from what I can gather from the article the children who were known HIV+ were not receiving standard care for it. I could understand if these children had exhausted all standard care and it not helped at all and then the custodians decided to use the experimental drug as a last resort, but from what I am gathering from the article that does not seem to be the case.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/02/1348210
BILL PERKINS: I believe that there were instances of children being put into these trials, perhaps without the proper protocols, perhaps without the proper parental consent and information being provided. I believe that ACS has misled us in terms of what has been going on, and therefore, I’m led to be very concerned about the integrity of any investigation that they decide to do on their own.

AMY GOODMAN: Vera Sharav, you’ve been on this story for quite a long time. What is your understanding, if you can describe for us, what you believe took place in the 1980s and 1990s?

VERA SHARAV: It went on until 2002, so it’s not just 1980s. What took place is essentially a complete violation of current federal regulations, which were established for protecting children such as these in 1983. This was after Willowbrook. The intent of the regulations was to protect the most vulnerable children from exploitation in medical experiments.

AMY GOODMAN: Willowbrook being the mental institution in New York.

VERA SHARAV: That’s correct. And now we have the ACS essentially bypassing the federal regulations, creating its own guidelines, expedited review, disregarding very fundamental human rights issues, such as informed consent. These children, according to the ACS guidelines, did not so much as have the dignity of individual consent on their behalf. They were herded like animals.

AMY GOODMAN: Who were these kids?

VERA SHARAV: These children were in foster care under the ACS, as well as Catholic charities. Many of the homes were run by them.

AMY GOODMAN: HIV+?

VERA SHARAV: HIV+. Now there’s even an issue about some of the trials, some of the protocols say that the children are, and I quote, “presumed to be HIV+.” Now, what kind of – what kind of society are we that children who are only presumed, and by whom are they presumed – what criteria makes them presumed to be HIV, that those children then get exposed to as many as seven highly toxic experimental drugs? These children were not in treatment, and ACS can’t fudge that. Research and treatment are two very different things. Our first question when we filed our federal complaint to the FDA and the Office of Human Protection a year ago – and those investigations, by the way, are still ongoing – we asked, why were those children denied the best treatment that was available, that was known already to be as effective as whatever it was?

AMY GOODMAN: Which was what? What was the best treatment?

VERA SHARAV: We don’t know that. You see, part of the problem with AIDS and with HIV is there is a great deal of uncertainty as to what is effective, what is not. Would some children be better off without the drugs? All of those sort of things are not to be decided by bureaucrats who want to expedite simply the enrollment of children and couldn’t care less as to what kind of experiments. I think it’s very important to note that when ACS on their official documents refers to these as minimal risk, that’s nonsense. These were phase I and phase II trials, which are the most experimental.