Experiments on Orphans

Nick Gillespie | July 28, 2005

The New York Press has a disturbing story about foster kids at Manhattan's Incarnation Children Center being used in experimental trials for various HIV drug regimens:

"At first they were little babies," [a child-care worker] told [author Liam Scheff]. "We changed their diapers and cleaned them up, and played with them. We were told they were 'special'--because of the HIV. There was a lot of shit and a lot of throwing up."...

"The nurses would lay out the drugs on the counter. Lots of pills, powders and oral syringes, all labeled for each particular child. We'd pick up the syringe and put it right into the mouth or into the tube if they had one....

"We figured it out," she said. "These were experimental treatments." Marta, another child-care worker, put it more bluntly, "This is the guinea-pig business," she said.

Whole thing here.

The ICC is at the heart of a brewing controversy and protest over the use of foster kids in medical experiments, which Scheff has written about before.

The NY Times recently ran a story dismissing all these claims (easy to do, given that a slavery reparations group is heavily involved in the protest). But regardless of the other issues raised (especially about questions regarding HIV's role in the transmission of AIDS), the Times piece is perplexing because it dismisses Scheff as a loony leftoid (easy to do because of his Indymedia connections) who turned to the Internet after an "was unable to get [an earlier version of the] story published anywhere else." Yet the Times also notes that his work inspired a BBC documentary called "The New York Experiment--Guinea Pig Kids" and then dismisses it because it was shown "only on BBC, in churches, block association meetings and private gatherings." Only on BBC? And on the most basic charge of whether the kids in question had been enrolled properly, the Times notes:

Columbia University Medical Center, which was found by federal officials to have "failed to have obtain sufficient information" in approving the participation of foster children in four trials, has acknowledged what it called a need to improve "how information is collected and decisions documented."

Better late than never. But that's no small potatoes, is it? The Times piece is online here.

Comments

|7.28.05 @ 11:08AM|#

Please forgive the threadjack, but a bunch of regular posters from the Connecticut-New York-New Jersey area have been talking about meeting up in Manhattan some weekend, to drink, solve all the world's problems and find out how wrong we were when we imagined what the others looked like. So far I've got seven posters, one lurker and a Reason staffer on board--if anyone else is interested drop me an e-mail. Right now we're looking at a Saturday evening in the latter half of August, or early September.

You may now resume talking about how our country's going straight to hell.

|7.28.05 @ 11:56AM|#

"I'm 17, not 18, and until I'm 18�I can say the sky is blue�and they'll say it's not�and I say 'Yes it is'�but it doesn't make a difference.

This is how all children are treated today. This is the reason why I absolutely hated highschool and junior high and have mostly bad memories from my formative years.

Anyway, this article is one of the saddest things I've ever read. That hospital and Incarnation Center are not complying with medical regulations regarding experiments or trials. Informed Consent is required before participation in any experiment (unless you're a child, whereby your legal guardian gets to decide -- which I guess is a problem for state-care orphans).

|7.28.05 @ 12:02PM|#

It's another proof for the fact that nytimes is no liberal newspaper.

|7.28.05 @ 12:36PM|#

It's another proof for the fact that nytimes is no liberal newspaper.
Comment by: sv at July 28, 2005 12:02 PM


I don't think liberalism has anything to do with it. How many liberal newspapers went balls to the wall covering the Tuskegee experiment?

ed|7.28.05 @ 12:51PM|#

What's PETA's stance on this?
I'll bet they prefer it to using rabbits or monkeys.

|7.28.05 @ 1:08PM|#

This sounds bad and may be true, but two things make me wary:

1) BBC really will run some pretty dubious stuff.

2) This article has comments about AZT that sound a lot in tone (if more restrained) like remarks in pieces that claim HIV has nothing to do with AIDS and that AZT is a killer placebo.

|7.28.05 @ 1:18PM|#

Yeah, the BBC can really escape into la-la land at time. The Nation just ran a rather long article last month criticizing a documentary that claimed that Al-Qaeda didn't exist until 9-11 or something ridiculous like that (I don't remember exactly what ti was, but it was silly). When The Nation, of all publications, repudiates an anti-Iraq war documentary, you know that the BBC is frequently off the wall.

|7.28.05 @ 1:52PM|#

But they look so harmless in the Monty Python sketches!

|7.28.05 @ 2:13PM|#

Yeah, I've got to throw my voice in with the others saying that being shown on the BBC is hardly proof of non-crankness.

I get the impression that the BBC was a respectable news organization in the past, but it sure doesn't come across that way to me in the present.

|7.28.05 @ 2:49PM|#

The author - Scheff - is very closely aligned with the HIV-denial movement. Here is an extended version of the article, with the material advocating discontinuation of AIDS treatment included:

http://www.altheal.org/toxicity/house.htm

Note that altheal.org is a site primarily intended to discredit the conventional wisdom on HIV and AIDS.

There appears to have been at least some fire under all this smoke, though - real violations of human subject experimental protocols took place.

|7.28.05 @ 2:49PM|#

I understand that proper procedures were allegedly not followed in this case, but on the larger issue of experimenting on humans, why are we so squeamish? I'm referring to situations involving diseases like AIDS that, lest we forget, was virtually a 100% death sentence until just a few years ago. Is there not a certain level of absurdity in the FDA preventing people with terminal illnesses from trying out treatments because they are "experimental" or possibly "harmful"? "You'd better not take this treatment, because it might hurt you.....as opposed to the certain death you're about to face". The whole mindset reminds me of the debate over nuclear energy. If you want reactors to generate electricity, many people will accuse you of wanting another Hiroshima, because they both have the word nuclear in them. Similarly, if you suggest that experimental drugs should be tried on humans, you must be Dr Mengele because didn't he conduct experiments on humans too?

|7.28.05 @ 2:55PM|#

Dave-
My opinion regarding this is that yes, the FDA should lighten up in regards to testing on humans, but the problem here is using foster kids as guinea pigs without anyone's consent. And according to one article I read, in many cases the drugs made them far, far sicker than they already were, and when certain foster parents tried to stop the experimenting/torture, they had the kids taken away.

If you're going to test on humans, use ones who are WILLING to be guinea pigs. Christ. Like AIDS orphans don't suffer enough already.

|7.28.05 @ 3:08PM|#

The author - Scheff - is very closely aligned with the HIV-denial movement.

Color me anything but stunned.

There appears to have been at least some fire under all this smoke, though - real violations of human subject experimental protocols took place.

If they're telling the truth about this, yes. With my suspicions about the writer apparently substantiated, I'd really like more evidence than his piece.

|7.29.05 @ 5:55AM|#

Jennifer-

I wasn't talking specifically about this case, and the use of orphans. My remarks were meant about the idea of human experimentation in general.

Vache Folle|7.29.05 @ 10:21AM|#

Foster children belong to the state.

|7.29.05 @ 11:16AM|#

Vache Folle-

Not quite. Children aren't property--you can't sell your own kids into slavery, and the state (supposedly) can't sell foster kids into slavery.

But I guess selling them to medical labs is another matter. . . .

|7.29.05 @ 1:12PM|#

Girl in story being forced to take drugs: "I'm 17, not 18, and until I'm 18 I can say the sky is blue and they'll say it's not,and I say 'Yes it is',but it doesn't make a difference. Three more months," she said, her throat tightening.

"I'm telling you, I can't wait?I can't wait."


How fucking sad. Apparently slavery is legal if you're under 18 and a foster child.

What does our resident Statist think about this? (You know who you are)

|8.4.05 @ 1:12AM|#

Hi,

Tell me exactly what the HIV denial movement is, please.

Here, Scheff answers his critics, and asks for a basic investigation into the on-the-books, mainstream science of HIV and AIDS.

http://liam.gnn.tv/blogs/7380/_Welcomes_Critical_Thinking_my_letter_in_the_Austin_Chronicle

and
his blog at gnn
http://liam.gnn.tv/

Why are people who say they care about AIDS so fundementalist religious about it? Where's the investigation of the facts? Of the debate itself?

Is an AIDS denialist someone who askes questions about the medical diagnosis and the drugs that are being used?

Is so, please call me a dissident, or denialist, or whatever - just don't call me a true believer, in anything.

Sam S.

Oakland, CA

|8.4.05 @ 1:36AM|#

HEY, sorry for the double post, but i just don't buy the denialist/true believer stuff. and I get depressed when the left folds up over this shit, and gets judgemental and heady, and just won't f**in READ.

Here's scheff's blog where he talks about denialism.

See if he's a denialist, or what, before you trash him.

Sorry for the long post, but it's hard to believe the left is so superficial about this, and refuses to even look.

AAAAgh. Frustration over years of watching friends on the drugs die, and friends off the drugs do better. Frustration on reading about the bullshit in aids science, and seeing no one do a thing about it. frustration of seeing a dude like scheff trashed because he seems to care and seems to research and seems to not give a shit about being liked by the drug companyes.

Shit.

denialism?
http://liam.gnn.tv/blogs/7380/_Welcomes_Critical_Thinking_my_letter_in_the_Austin_Chronicle

scheff got shitcanned in the newyork times because he will report what the doctors say, and so liberals don't have to think about it, cuz the times knows all!

http://liam.gnn.tv/blogs/7473/NY_Times_To_The_Rescue

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