This is part two of a two-part series on human medical experimentation. Click here to read part one and the introduction.
(1966)
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The CIA continues a limited number of MKULTRA plans by beginning Project MKSEARCH to develop and test ways of using biological, chemical and radioactive materials in intelligence operations, and also to develop and test drugs that are able to produce predictable changes in human behavior and physiology (Goliszek).
Dr. Henry Beecher writes, "The well-being, the health, even the actual or potential life of all human beings, born or unborn, depend upon the continuing experimentation in man. Proceed it must; proceed it will. 'The proper study of mankind is man,'" in his "exposé" on human medical experimentation Research and the Individual ("Human Experimentation: Before the Nazi Era and After").
U.S. Army scientists drop light bulbs filled with Bacillus subtilis through ventilation gates and into the New York City subway system, exposing more than one million civilians to the bacteria (Goliszek).
The National Commission for the Protection of Research Subjects issues its Policies for the Protection of Human Subjects, which eventually creates what we now know as institutional review boards (IRBs) (Sharav).
(1967)
Continuing on his Dow Chemical Company-sponsored dioxin study without the company's knowledge or consent, University of Pennsylvania Professor Albert Kligman increases the dosage of dioxin he applies to 10 prisoners' skin to 7,500 micrograms, 468 times the dosage Dow official Gerald K. Rowe had authorized him to administer. As a result, the prisoners experience acne lesions that develop into inflammatory pustules and papules (Kaye).
The CIA places a chemical in the drinking water supply of the FDA headquarters in Washington, D.C. to see whether it is possible to spike drinking water with LSD and other substances (Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).
In a study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, researchers inject pregnant women with radioactive cortisol to see if the radioactive material will cross the placentas and affect the fetuses (Goliszek).
The U.S. Army pays Professor Kligman to apply skin-blistering chemicals to Holmesburg Prison inmates' faces and backs, so as to, in Professor Kligman's words, "learn how the skin protects itself against chronic assault from toxic chemicals, the so-called hardening process," information which would have both offensive and defensive applications for the U.S. military (Kaye).
The CIA and Edgewood Arsenal Research Laboratories begin an extensive program for developing drugs that can influence human behavior. This program includes Project OFTEN -- which studies the toxicology, transmission and behavioral effects of drugs in animal and human subjects -- and Project CHICKWIT, which gathers European and Asian drug development information (Goliszek).
Professor Kligman develops Retin-A as an acne cream (and eventually a wrinkle cream), turning him into a multi-millionaire (Kaye).
Researchers paralyze 64 prison inmates in California with a neuromuscular compound called succinylcholine, which produces suppressed breathing that feels similar to drowning. When five prisoners refuse to participate in the medical experiment, the prison's special treatment board gives researchers permission to inject the prisoners with the drug against their will (Greger).
(1968)
Planned Parenthood of San Antonio and South Central Texas and the Southwest Foundation for Research and Education begin an oral contraceptive study on 70 poverty-stricken Mexican-American women, giving only half the oral contraceptives they think they are receiving and the other half a placebo. When the results of this study are released a few years later, it stirs tremendous controversy among Mexican-Americans (Sharav, Sauter).
(1969)
President Nixon ends the United States' offensive biowarfare program, including human experimentation done at Fort Detrick. By this time, tens of thousands of civilians and members of the U.S. armed forces have wittingly and unwittingly acted as participants in experiments involving exposure to dangerous biological agents (Goliszek).
The U.S. military conducts DTC Test 69-12, which is an open-air test of VX and sarin nerve agents at the Army's Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland, likely exposing military personnel (Goliszek, Martin).
Experimental drugs are tested on mentally disabled children in Milledgeville, Ga., without any institutional approval whatsoever (Sharav).
Dr. Donald MacArthur, the U.S. Department of Defense's Deputy Director for Research and Technology, requests $10 million from Congress to develop a synthetic biological agent that would be resistant "to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease" (Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).
Judge Sam Steinfield's dissent in Strunk v. Strunk, 445 S.W.2d 145 marks the first time a judge has ever suggested that the Nuremberg Code be applied in American court cases (Sharav).
(1970)
A year after his request, under H.R. 15090, Dr. MacArthur receives funding to begin CIA-supervised mycoplasma research with Fort Detrick's Special Operations Division and hopefully create a synthetic immunosuppressive agent. Some experts believe that this research may have inadvertently created HIV, the virus that causes AIDS (Goliszek).
Under order from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which also sponsored the Tuskegee Experiment, the free childcare program at Johns Hopkins University collects blood samples from 7,000 African-American youth, telling their parents that they are checking for anemia but actually checking for an extra Y chromosome (XYY), believed to be a biological predisposition to crime. The program director, Digamber Borganokar, does this experiment without Johns Hopkins University's permission (Greger, Merritte, et al.).
(1971)
President Nixon converts Fort Detrick from an offensive biowarfare lab to the Frederick Cancer Research and Development Center, now known as the National Cancer Institute at Frederick. In addition to cancer research, scientists study virology, immunology and retrovirology (including HIV) there. Additionally, the site is home to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute, which researches drugs, vaccines and countermeasures for biological warfare, so the former Fort Detrick does not move far away from its biowarfare past (Goliszek).
Stanford University conducts the Stanford Prison Experiment on a group of college students in order to learn the psychology of prison life. Some students are given the role as prison guards, while the others are given the role of prisoners. After only six days, the proposed two-week study has to end because of its psychological effects on the participants. The "guards" had begun to act sadistic, while the "prisoners" started to show signs of depression and severe psychological stress (University of New Hampshire).
An article entitled "Viral Infections in Man Associated with Acquired Immunological Deficiency States" appears in Federation Proceedings. Dr. MacArthur and Fort Detrick's Special Operations Division have, at this point, been conducting mycoplasma research to create a synthetic immunosuppressive agent for about one year, again suggesting that this research may have produced HIV (Goliszek).
(1972)
In studies sponsored by the U.S. Air Force, Dr. Amedeo Marrazzi gives LSD to mental patients at the University of Missouri Institute of Psychiatry and the University of Minnesota Hospital to study "ego strength" (Barker).
(1973)
An Ad Hoc Advisory Panel issues its Final Report on the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, writing, "Society can no longer afford to leave the balancing of individual rights against scientific progress to the scientific community" (Sharav).
(1974)
Congress enacts the National Research Act, creating the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research and finally setting standards for human experimentation on children (Breslow).
(1975)
The Department of Health, Education and Welfare gives the National Institutes of Health's Policies for the Protection of Human Subjects (1966) regulatory status. Title 45, known as "The Common Rule," officially creates institutional review boards (IRBs) (Sharav).
(1977)
The Kennedy Hearing initiates the process toward Executive Order 12333, prohibiting intelligence agencies from experimenting on humans without informed consent (Merritte, et al.).
The U.S. government issues an official apology and $400,000 to Jeanne Connell, the sole survivor from Col. Warren's now-infamous plutonium injections at Strong Memorial Hospital, and the families of the other human test subjects (Burton Report).
The National Urban League holds its National Conference on Human Experimentation, stating, "We don't want to kill science but we don't want science to kill, mangle and abuse us" (Sharav).
(1978)
The CDC begins experimental hepatitis B vaccine trials in New York. Its ads for research subjects specifically ask for promiscuous homosexual men. Professor Wolf Szmuness of the Columbia University School of Public Health had made the vaccine's infective serum from the pooled blood serum of hepatitis-infected homosexuals and then developed it in chimpanzees, the only animal susceptible to hepatitis B, leading to the theory that HIV originated in chimpanzees before being transferred over to humans via this vaccine. A few months after 1,083 homosexual men receive the vaccine, New York physicians begin noticing cases of Kaposi's sarcoma, Mycoplasma penetrans and a new strain of herpes virus among New York's homosexual community -- diseases not usually seen among young, American men, but that would later be known as common opportunistic diseases associated with AIDS (Goliszek).
(1979)
The National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research releases the Belmont Report, which establishes the foundations for research experimentation on humans. The Belmont Report mandates that researchers follow three basic principles: 1. Respect the subjects as autonomous persons and protect those with limited ability for independence (such as children), 2. Do no harm, 3. Choose test subjects justly -- being sure not to target certain groups because of they are easily accessible or easily manipulated, rather than for reasons directly related to the tests (Berdon).
(1980)
A study reveals a high incidence of leukemia among the 18,000 military personnel who participated in 1957's Operation Plumbbob (a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plumbbob">"Operation Plumbob").
According to blood samples tested years later for HIV, 20 percent of all New York homosexual men who participated in the 1978 hepatitis B vaccine experiment are HIV-positive by this point (Goliszek).
American doctors give experimental hormone shots to hundreds of Haitian men confined to detention camps in Miami and Puerto Rico, causing the men to develop a condition known as gynecomastia, in which men develop full-sized breasts (Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).
The CDC continues its 1978 hepatitis B vaccine experiment in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, St. Louis and Denver, recruiting over 7,000 homosexual men in San Francisco alone (Goliszek).
The FDA prohibits the use of prison inmates in pharmaceutical drug trials, leading to the advent of the experimental drug testing centers industry (Sharav).
The first AIDS case appears in San Francisco (Goliszek).
(1981)
(1981 - 1993) The Seattle-based Genetic Systems Corporation begins an ongoing medical experiment called Protocol No. 126, in which cancer patients at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle are given bone marrow transplants that contain eight experimental proteins made by Genetic Systems, rather than standard bone marrow transplants; 19 human subjects die from complications directly related to the experimental treatment (Goliszek).
A deep diving experiment at Duke University causes test subject Leonard Whitlock to suffer permanent brain damage (Sharav).
The CDC acknowledges that a disease known as AIDS exists and confirms 26 cases of the disease -- all in previously healthy homosexuals living in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles -- again supporting the speculation that AIDS originated from the hepatitis B experiments from 1978 and 1980 (Goliszek).
(1982)
Thirty percent of the test subjects used in the CDC's hepatitis B vaccine experiment are HIV-positive by this point (Goliszek).
(1984)
SFBC Phase I research clinic founded in Miami, Fla. By 2005, it would become the largest experimental drug testing center in North America with centers in Miami and Montreal, running Phase I to Phase IV clinical trials (Drug Development-Technology.com).
(1985)
A former U.S. Army sergeant tries to sue the Army for using drugs on him in without his consent or even his knowledge in United States v. Stanley, 483 U.S. 669. Justice Antonin Scalia writes the decision, clearing the U.S. military from any liability in past, present or future medical experiments without informed consent (Merritte, et al..
(1987)
Philadelphia resident Doris Jackson discovers that researchers have removed her son's brain post mortem for medical study. She later learns that the state of Pennsylvania has a doctrine of "implied consent," meaning that unless a patient signs a document stating otherwise, consent for organ removal is automatically implied (Merritte, et al.).
(1988)
The U.S. Justice Department pays nine Canadian survivors of the CIA and Dr. Cameron's "psychic driving" experiments (1957 - 1964) $750,000 in out-of-court settlements, to avoid any further investigations into MKULTRA (Goliszek).
(1988 - 2001) The New York City Administration for Children's Services begins allowing foster care children living in about two dozen children's homes to be used in National Institutes of Health-sponsored (NIH) experimental AIDS drug trials. These children -- totaling 465 by the program's end -- experience serious side effects, including inability to walk, diarrhea, vomiting, swollen joints and cramps. Children's home employees are unaware that they are giving the HIV-infected children experimental drugs, rather than standard AIDS treatments (New York City ACS, Doran).
(1990)
The United States sends 1.7 million members of the armed forces, 22 percent of whom are African-American, to the Persian Gulf for the Gulf War ("Desert Storm"). More than 400,000 of these soldiers are ordered to take an experimental nerve agent medication called pyridostigmine, which is later believed to be the cause of Gulf War Syndrome -- symptoms ranging from skin disorders, neurological disorders, incontinence, uncontrollable drooling and vision problems -- affecting Gulf War veterans (Goliszek; Merritte, et al.).
The CDC and Kaiser Pharmaceuticals of Southern California inject 1,500 six-month-old black and Hispanic babies in Los Angeles with an "experimental" measles vaccine that had never been licensed for use in the United States. Adding to the risk, children less than a year old may not have an adequate amount of myelin around their nerves, possibly resulting in impaired neural development because of the vaccine. The CDC later admits that parents were never informed that the vaccine being injected into their children was experimental (Goliszek).
The FDA allows the U.S. Department of Defense to waive the Nuremberg Code and use unapproved drugs and vaccines in Operation Desert Shield (Sharav).
(1991)
In the May 27 issue of the Los Angeles Times, former U.S. Navy radio operator Richard Jenkins writes that he suffers from leukemia, chronic fatigue and kidney and liver disease as a result of the radiation exposure he received in 1958's Operation Hardtack (Goliszek).
While participating in a UCLA study that withdraws schizophrenics off of their medications, Tony LaMadrid commits suicide (Sharav).
(1992)
Columbia University's New York State Psychiatric Institute and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine give 100 males -- mostly African-American and Hispanic, all between the ages of six and 10 and all the younger brothers of juvenile delinquents -- 10 milligrams of fenfluramine (fen-fen) per kilogram of body weight in order to test the theory that low serotonin levels are linked to violent or aggressive behavior. Parents of the participants received $125 each, including a $25 Toys 'R' Us gift certificate (Goliszek).
(1993)
Researchers at the West Haven VA in Connecticut give 27 schizophrenics -- 12 inpatients and 15 functioning volunteers -- a chemical called MCPP that significantly increases their psychotic symptoms and, as researchers note, negatively affects the test subjects on a long-term basis ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
(1994)
In a double-blind experiment at New York VA Hospital, researchers take 23 schizophrenic inpatients off of their medications for a median of 30 days. They then give 17 of them 0.5 mg/kg amphetamine and six a placebo as a control, following up with PET scans at Brookhaven Laboratories. According to the researchers, the purpose of the experiment was "to specifically evaluate metabolic effects in subjects with varying degrees of amphetamine-induced psychotic exacerbation" ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
Albuquerque Tribune reporter Eileen Welsome receives a Pulitzer Prize for her investigative reporting into Col. Warren's plutonium experiments on patients at Strong Memorial Hospital in 1945 (Burton Report).
In a federally funded experiment at New York VA Medical Center, researchers give schizophrenic veterans amphetamine, even though central nervous system stimulants worsen psychotic symptoms in 40 percent of schizophrenics ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
Researchers at Bronx VA Medical Center recruit 28 schizophrenic veterans who are functioning in society and give them L-dopa in order to deliberately induce psychotic relapse ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
President Clinton appoints the Advisory Commission on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE), which finally reveals the horrific experiments conducted during the Cold War era in its ACHRE Report.
(1995)
A 19-year-old University of Rochester student named Nicole Wan dies from participating in an MIT-sponsored experiment that tests airborne pollutant chemicals on humans. The experiment pays $150 to human test subjects (Sharav).
In the Mar. 15 President's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE), former human subjects, including those who were used in experiments as children, give sworn testimonies stating that they were subjected to radiation experiments and/or brainwashed, hypnotized, drugged, psychologically tortured, threatened and even raped during CIA experiments. These sworn statements include:
Christina DeNicola's statement that, in Tucson, Ariz., from 1966 to 1976, "Dr. B" performed mind control experiments using drugs, post-hypnotic injection and drama, and irradiation experiments on her neck, throat, chest and uterus. She was only four years old when the experiments started.
Claudia Mullen's testimony that Dr. Sidney Gottlieb (of MKULTRA fame) used chemicals, radiation, hypnosis, drugs, isolation in tubs of water, sleep deprivation, electric shock, brainwashing and emotional, sexual and verbal abuse as part of mind control experiments that had the ultimate objective of turning her, who was only a child at the time, into the "perfect spy." She tells the advisory committee that researchers justified this abuse by telling her that she was serving her country "in their bold effort to fight Communism."
Suzanne Starr's statement that "a physician, who was retired from the military, got children from the mountains of Colorado for experiments." She says she was one of those children and that she was the victim of experiments involving environmental deprivation to the point of forced psychosis, spin programming, injections, rape and frequent electroshock and mind control sessions. "I have fought self-destructive programmed messages to kill myself, and I know what a programmed message is, and I don’t act on them," she tells the advisory committee of the experiments' long-lasting effects, even in her adulthood (Goliszek).
President Clinton publicly apologizes to the thousands of people who were victims of MKULTRA and other mind-control experimental programs (Sharav).
In Dr. Daniel P. van Kammen's study, "Behavioral vs. Biochemical Prediction of Clinical Stability Following Haloperidol Withdrawal in Schizophrenia," researchers recruit 88 veterans who are stabilized by their medications enough to make them functional in society, and hospitalize them for eight to 10 weeks. During this time, the researchers stop giving the veterans the medications that are enabling them to live in society, placing them back on a two- to four-week regimen of the standard dose of Haldol. Then, the veterans are "washed-out," given lumbar punctures and put under six-week observation to see who would relapse and suffer symptomatic schizophrenia once again; 50 percent do ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
President Clinton appoints the National Bioethics Advisory Committee (Sharav).
Justice Edward Greenfield of the New York State Supreme Court rules that parents do not have the right to volunteer their mentally incapacitated children for non-therapeutic medical research studies and that no mentally incapacitated person whatsoever can be used in a medical experiment without informed consent (Sharav).
(1996)
Professor Adil E. Shamoo of the University of Maryland and the organization Citizens for Responsible Care and Research sends a written testimony on the unethical use of veterans in medical research to the U.S. Senate's Committee on Governmental Affairs, stating: "This type of research is on-going nationwide in medical centers and VA hospitals supported by tens of millions of dollars of taxpayers money. These experiments are high risk and are abusive, causing not only physical and psychic harm to the most vulnerable groups but also degrading our society’s system of basic human values. Probably tens of thousands of patients are being subjected to such experiments" ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
The Department of Defense admits that Gulf War soldiers were exposed to chemical agents; however, 33 percent of all military personnel afflicted with Gulf War Syndrome never left the United States during the war, discrediting the popular mainstream belief that these symptoms are a result of exposure to Iraqi chemical weapons (Merritte, et al.).
In a federally funded experiment at West Haven VA in Connecticut, Yale University researchers give schizophrenic veterans amphetamine, even though central nervous system stimulants worsen psychotic symptoms in 40 percent of schizophrenics ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
President Clinton issues a formal apology to the subjects of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and their families (Sharav).
(1997)
In order to expose unethical medical experiments that provoke psychotic relapse in schizophrenic patients, the Boston Globe publishes a four-part series entitled "Doing Harm: Research on the Mentally Ill" (Sharav).
Researchers give 26 veterans at a VA hospital a chemical called Yohimbine to purposely induce post-traumatic stress disorder ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
In order to create a "psychosis model," University of Cincinnati researchers give 16 schizophrenic patients at Cincinnati VA amphetamine in order to provoke repeats bouts of psychosis and eventually produce "behavioral sensitization" (Sharav).
National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) researchers give schizophrenic veterans amphetamine, even though central nervous system stimulants worsen psychotic symptoms in 40 percent of schizophrenics ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
In an experiment sponsored by the U.S. government, researchers withhold medical treatment from HIV-positive African-American pregnant women, giving them a placebo rather than AIDS medication (Sharav).
Researchers give amphetamine to 13 schizophrenic patients in a repetition of the 1994 "amphetamine challenge" at New York VA Hospital. As a result, the patients experience psychosis, delusions and hallucinations. The researchers claim to have informed consent ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
On Sept. 18, victims of unethical medical experiments at major U.S. research centers, including the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) testify before the National Bioethics Advisory Committee (Sharav).
(1999)
Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D. testifies on "The Unethical Use of Human Beings in High-Risk Research Experiments" before the U.S. House of Representatives' House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, alerting the House on the use of American veterans in VA Hospitals as human guinea pigs and calling for national reforms ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
Doctors at the University of Pennsylvania inject 18-year-old Jesse Gelsinger with an experimental gene therapy as part of an FDA-approved clinical trial. He dies four days later and his father suspects that he was not fully informed of the experiment's risk (Goliszek)
During a clinical trial investigating the effectiveness of Propulsid for infant acid reflux, nine-month-old Gage Stevens dies at Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh (Sharav).
(2000)
The Department of Defense begins declassifying the records of Project 112, including SHAD, and locating and assisting the veterans who were exposed to live toxins and chemical agents as part of Project 112. Many of them have already died (Goliszek).
President Clinton authorizes the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Act, which compensates the Department of Energy workers who sacrificed their health to build the United States' nuclear defenses (Sharav).
The U.S. Air Force and rocket maker Lockheed Martin sponsor a Loma Linda University study that pays 100 Californians $1,000 to eat a dose of perchlorate -- a toxic component of rocket fuel that causes cancer, damages the thyroid gland and hinders normal development in children and fetuses -- every day for six months. The dose eaten by the test subjects is 83 times the safe dose of perchlorate set by the State of California, which has perchlorate in some of its drinking water. This Loma Linda study is the first large-scale study to use human subjects to test the harmful effects of a water pollutant and is "inherently unethical," according to Environmental Working Group research director Richard Wiles (Goliszek, Envirnomental Working Group).
(2001)
Healthy 27-year-old Ellen Roche dies in a challenge study at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland (Sharav).
On its website, the FDA admits that its policy to include healthy children in human experiments "has led to an increasing number of proposals for studies of safety and pharmacokinetics, including those in children who do not have the condition for which the drug is intended" (Goliszek).
During a tobacco industry-financed Alzheimer's experiment at Case Western University in Cleveland, Elaine Holden-Able dies after she drinks a glass of orange juice containing a dissolved dietary supplement (Sharav).
Radiologist Scott Scheer of Pennsylvania dies from kidney failure, severe anemia and possibly lupus -- all caused by blood pressure drugs he was taking as part of a five-year clinical trial. After his death, his family sues the Institutional Review Board of Main Line Hospitals, the hospital that oversaw the study, and two doctors. Investigators from the federal Office for Human Research Protections, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, later conclude in a Dec. 20, 2002 letter to Scheer's oldest daughter: "Your father apparently was not told about the risk of hydralazine-induced lupus … OHRP found that certain unanticipated problems involving risks to subjects or others were not promptly reported to appropriate institutional officials" (Willen and Evans, "Doctor Who Died in Drug Test Was Betrayed by System He Trusted.")
In Higgins and Grimes v. Kennedy Krieger Institute The Maryland Court of Appeals makes a landmark decision regarding the use of children as test subjects, prohibiting non-therapeutic experimentation on children on the basis of "best interest of the individual child" (Sharav).
(2002)
President George W. Bush signs the Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act (BPCA), offering pharmaceutical companies six-month exclusivity in exchange for running clinical drug trials on children. This will of course increase the number of children used as human test subjects (Hammer Breslow).
(2003)
Two-year-old Michael Daddio of Delaware dies of congestive heart failure. After his death, his parents learn that doctors had performed an experimental surgery on him when he was five months old, rather than using the established surgical method of repairing his congenital heart defect that the parents had been told would be performed. The established procedure has a 90- to 95-percent success rate, whereas the inventor of the procedure performed on baby Daddio would later be fired from his hospital in 2004 (Willen and Evans, "Parents of Babies Who Died in Delaware Tests Weren't Warned").
(2004)
In his BBC documentary "Guinea Pig Kids" and BBC News article of the same name, reporter Jamie Doran reveals that children involved in the New York City foster care system were unwitting human subjects in experimental AIDS drug trials from 1988 to, in his belief, present times (Doran).
(2005)
In response to the BBC documentary and article "Guinea Pig Kids", the New York City Administration of Children's Services (ACS) sends out an Apr. 22 press release admitting that foster care children were used in experimental AIDS drug trials, but says that the last trial took place in 2001 and thus the trials are not continuing, as BBC reporter Jamie Doran claims. The ACS gives the extent and statistics of the experimental drug trials, based on its own records, and contracts the Vera Institute of Justice to conduct "an independent review of ACS policy and practice regarding the enrollment of HIV-positive children in foster care in clinical drug trials during the late 1980s and 1990s" (New York City ACS).
In exchange for receiving $2 million from the American Chemical Society, the EPA proposes the Children's Health Environmental Exposure Research Study (CHEERS) to learn how children ranging from infancy to three years old ingest, inhale and absorb chemicals by exposing children from a poor, predominantly black area of Duval County, Fla., to these toxins. Due to pressure from activist groups, negative media coverage and two Democratic senators, the EPA eventually decides to drop the study on Apr. 8, 2005 (Organic Consumers Association).
Bloomberg releases a series of reports suggesting that SFBC, the largest experimental drug testing center of its time, exploits immigrant and other low-income test subjects and runs tests with limited credibility due to violations of both the FDA's and SFBC's own testing guidelines (Bloomberg).
Works cited:
Alliance for Human Research Protection. "'Monster Experiment' Taught Orphans to Stutter.". June 11, 2001.
Barker, Allen. "The Cold War Experiments." Mind Control.
Berdon, Victoria. "Codes of Medical and Human Experimentation Ethics." The Least of My Brothers.
Brinker, Wendy. "James Marion Sims: Father Butcher." Seed Show.
Burton Report. "Human Experimentation, Plutonium and Col. Stafford Warren."
Cockburn, Alexander and Jeffrey St. Clair, eds. "Germ War: The U.S. Record." Counter Punch.
"Donald Ewan [sic] Cameron." Wikipedia.
Doran, Jamie. "Guinea Pig Kids." BBC News. 30 Nov. 2004.
Drug Development-Technology.com. "SFBC."
Elliston, Jon. "MKULTRA: CIA Mind Control." Dossier: Paranormal Government.
Environmental Working Group. "U.S.: Lockheed Martin's Tests on Humans." CorpWatch.
Global Security. Chemical Corps. 2005.
Goliszek, Andrew. In the Name of Science. New York: St. Martin's, 2003.
Greger, Michael, M.D. Heart Failure: Diary of a Third Year Medical Student.
Griffiths, Joel and Chris Bryson. "Toxic Secrets: Fluoride and the Atom Bomb." Nexus Magazine 5:3. Apr. - May 1998.
Hammer Breslow, Lauren. "The Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act of 2002: The Rise of the Voluntary Incentive Structure and Congressional Refusal to Require Pediatric Testing." Harvard Journal of Legislation Vol. 40.
"Human Experimentation: Before the Nazi Era and After." Micah Books.
Kaye, Jonathan. "Retin-A's Wrinkled Past." Mind Control. Orig. pub. Penn History Review Spring 1997.
"Manhattan Project: Oak Ridge." World Socialist Web Site. Oct. 18, 2002.
Meiklejohn, Gordon N., M.D. "Commission on Influenza." Histories of the Commissions. Ed. Theodore E. Woodward, M.D. The Armed Forced Epidemiological Board. 1994.
Merritte, LaTasha, et al.. "The Banality of Evil: Human Medical Experimentation in the United States." The Public Law Online Journal. Spring 1999.
Milgram, Stanley. "Milgram Experiment." Wikipedia. 2006.
New York City Administration of Children's Services. Press release. 22 Apr. 2005.
"Operation Plumbbob." Wikipedia. 2005.
"Operation Whitecoat." Religion and Ethics (Episode no. 708). Oct. 24, 2003.
Organic Consumers Association. "EPA and Chemical Industry to Study the Effects of Known Toxic Chemicals on Children". 12 Apr. 2005.
Pacchioli, David. Subjected to Science. Mar. 1996.
"Placebo Effect." Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine. 2006.
"Project Paperclip." Wikipedia. 2005.
"Reviews and Notes: History of Medicine: Subjected to Science: Human Experimentation in America before the Second World War." Annals of Internal Medicine 123:2. July 15, 1995.
Sharav, Vera Hassner. "Human Experiments: A Chronology of Human Rsearch." Alliance for Human Research Protection.
Sauter, Daniel. Guide to MS 83 [Planned Parenthood of San Antonio and South Central Texas Records, 1931 - 1999]. University of Texas Library. Apr. 2001.
"Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D." News from the Joint Hearing on Suspension of Medical Research at West Los Angeles and Sepulveda VA Medical Facilities and Informed Consent and Patient Safety in VA Medical Research. 21 Apr. 1999.
University of New Hampshire. "Chronology of Cases Involving Unethical Treatment of Human Subjects." Responsible Conduct of Research.
University of Virginia Health System Health Sciences Library. "Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Study." 2004.
U.S. Department of Energy. "Chapter 8: Postwar TBI-Effects Experimentation: Continued Reliance on Sick Patients in Place of Healthy "Normals." Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE) Final Report.
Veterans Health Administration. Project 112/Project SHAD. May 26, 2005.
Willen, Liz and David Evans. "Doctor Who Died in Drug Test Was Betrayed by System He Trusted." Bloomberg. Nov. 2, 2005.
(1966)
The CIA continues a limited number of MKULTRA plans by beginning Project MKSEARCH to develop and test ways of using biological, chemical and radioactive materials in intelligence operations, and also to develop and test drugs that are able to produce predictable changes in human behavior and physiology (Goliszek).
Dr. Henry Beecher writes, "The well-being, the health, even the actual or potential life of all human beings, born or unborn, depend upon the continuing experimentation in man. Proceed it must; proceed it will. 'The proper study of mankind is man,'" in his "exposé" on human medical experimentation Research and the Individual ("Human Experimentation: Before the Nazi Era and After").
U.S. Army scientists drop light bulbs filled with Bacillus subtilis through ventilation gates and into the New York City subway system, exposing more than one million civilians to the bacteria (Goliszek).
The National Commission for the Protection of Research Subjects issues its Policies for the Protection of Human Subjects, which eventually creates what we now know as institutional review boards (IRBs) (Sharav).
(1967)
Continuing on his Dow Chemical Company-sponsored dioxin study without the company's knowledge or consent, University of Pennsylvania Professor Albert Kligman increases the dosage of dioxin he applies to 10 prisoners' skin to 7,500 micrograms, 468 times the dosage Dow official Gerald K. Rowe had authorized him to administer. As a result, the prisoners experience acne lesions that develop into inflammatory pustules and papules (Kaye).
The CIA places a chemical in the drinking water supply of the FDA headquarters in Washington, D.C. to see whether it is possible to spike drinking water with LSD and other substances (Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).
In a study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, researchers inject pregnant women with radioactive cortisol to see if the radioactive material will cross the placentas and affect the fetuses (Goliszek).
The U.S. Army pays Professor Kligman to apply skin-blistering chemicals to Holmesburg Prison inmates' faces and backs, so as to, in Professor Kligman's words, "learn how the skin protects itself against chronic assault from toxic chemicals, the so-called hardening process," information which would have both offensive and defensive applications for the U.S. military (Kaye).
The CIA and Edgewood Arsenal Research Laboratories begin an extensive program for developing drugs that can influence human behavior. This program includes Project OFTEN -- which studies the toxicology, transmission and behavioral effects of drugs in animal and human subjects -- and Project CHICKWIT, which gathers European and Asian drug development information (Goliszek).
Professor Kligman develops Retin-A as an acne cream (and eventually a wrinkle cream), turning him into a multi-millionaire (Kaye).
Researchers paralyze 64 prison inmates in California with a neuromuscular compound called succinylcholine, which produces suppressed breathing that feels similar to drowning. When five prisoners refuse to participate in the medical experiment, the prison's special treatment board gives researchers permission to inject the prisoners with the drug against their will (Greger).
(1968)
Planned Parenthood of San Antonio and South Central Texas and the Southwest Foundation for Research and Education begin an oral contraceptive study on 70 poverty-stricken Mexican-American women, giving only half the oral contraceptives they think they are receiving and the other half a placebo. When the results of this study are released a few years later, it stirs tremendous controversy among Mexican-Americans (Sharav, Sauter).
(1969)
President Nixon ends the United States' offensive biowarfare program, including human experimentation done at Fort Detrick. By this time, tens of thousands of civilians and members of the U.S. armed forces have wittingly and unwittingly acted as participants in experiments involving exposure to dangerous biological agents (Goliszek).
The U.S. military conducts DTC Test 69-12, which is an open-air test of VX and sarin nerve agents at the Army's Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland, likely exposing military personnel (Goliszek, Martin).
Experimental drugs are tested on mentally disabled children in Milledgeville, Ga., without any institutional approval whatsoever (Sharav).
Dr. Donald MacArthur, the U.S. Department of Defense's Deputy Director for Research and Technology, requests $10 million from Congress to develop a synthetic biological agent that would be resistant "to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease" (Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).
Judge Sam Steinfield's dissent in Strunk v. Strunk, 445 S.W.2d 145 marks the first time a judge has ever suggested that the Nuremberg Code be applied in American court cases (Sharav).
(1970)
A year after his request, under H.R. 15090, Dr. MacArthur receives funding to begin CIA-supervised mycoplasma research with Fort Detrick's Special Operations Division and hopefully create a synthetic immunosuppressive agent. Some experts believe that this research may have inadvertently created HIV, the virus that causes AIDS (Goliszek).
Under order from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which also sponsored the Tuskegee Experiment, the free childcare program at Johns Hopkins University collects blood samples from 7,000 African-American youth, telling their parents that they are checking for anemia but actually checking for an extra Y chromosome (XYY), believed to be a biological predisposition to crime. The program director, Digamber Borganokar, does this experiment without Johns Hopkins University's permission (Greger, Merritte, et al.).
(1971)
President Nixon converts Fort Detrick from an offensive biowarfare lab to the Frederick Cancer Research and Development Center, now known as the National Cancer Institute at Frederick. In addition to cancer research, scientists study virology, immunology and retrovirology (including HIV) there. Additionally, the site is home to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute, which researches drugs, vaccines and countermeasures for biological warfare, so the former Fort Detrick does not move far away from its biowarfare past (Goliszek).
Stanford University conducts the Stanford Prison Experiment on a group of college students in order to learn the psychology of prison life. Some students are given the role as prison guards, while the others are given the role of prisoners. After only six days, the proposed two-week study has to end because of its psychological effects on the participants. The "guards" had begun to act sadistic, while the "prisoners" started to show signs of depression and severe psychological stress (University of New Hampshire).
An article entitled "Viral Infections in Man Associated with Acquired Immunological Deficiency States" appears in Federation Proceedings. Dr. MacArthur and Fort Detrick's Special Operations Division have, at this point, been conducting mycoplasma research to create a synthetic immunosuppressive agent for about one year, again suggesting that this research may have produced HIV (Goliszek).
(1972)
In studies sponsored by the U.S. Air Force, Dr. Amedeo Marrazzi gives LSD to mental patients at the University of Missouri Institute of Psychiatry and the University of Minnesota Hospital to study "ego strength" (Barker).
(1973)
An Ad Hoc Advisory Panel issues its Final Report on the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, writing, "Society can no longer afford to leave the balancing of individual rights against scientific progress to the scientific community" (Sharav).
(1974)
Congress enacts the National Research Act, creating the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research and finally setting standards for human experimentation on children (Breslow).
(1975)
The Department of Health, Education and Welfare gives the National Institutes of Health's Policies for the Protection of Human Subjects (1966) regulatory status. Title 45, known as "The Common Rule," officially creates institutional review boards (IRBs) (Sharav).
(1977)
The Kennedy Hearing initiates the process toward Executive Order 12333, prohibiting intelligence agencies from experimenting on humans without informed consent (Merritte, et al.).
The U.S. government issues an official apology and $400,000 to Jeanne Connell, the sole survivor from Col. Warren's now-infamous plutonium injections at Strong Memorial Hospital, and the families of the other human test subjects (Burton Report).
The National Urban League holds its National Conference on Human Experimentation, stating, "We don't want to kill science but we don't want science to kill, mangle and abuse us" (Sharav).
(1978)
The CDC begins experimental hepatitis B vaccine trials in New York. Its ads for research subjects specifically ask for promiscuous homosexual men. Professor Wolf Szmuness of the Columbia University School of Public Health had made the vaccine's infective serum from the pooled blood serum of hepatitis-infected homosexuals and then developed it in chimpanzees, the only animal susceptible to hepatitis B, leading to the theory that HIV originated in chimpanzees before being transferred over to humans via this vaccine. A few months after 1,083 homosexual men receive the vaccine, New York physicians begin noticing cases of Kaposi's sarcoma, Mycoplasma penetrans and a new strain of herpes virus among New York's homosexual community -- diseases not usually seen among young, American men, but that would later be known as common opportunistic diseases associated with AIDS (Goliszek).
(1979)
The National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research releases the Belmont Report, which establishes the foundations for research experimentation on humans. The Belmont Report mandates that researchers follow three basic principles: 1. Respect the subjects as autonomous persons and protect those with limited ability for independence (such as children), 2. Do no harm, 3. Choose test subjects justly -- being sure not to target certain groups because of they are easily accessible or easily manipulated, rather than for reasons directly related to the tests (Berdon).
(1980)
A study reveals a high incidence of leukemia among the 18,000 military personnel who participated in 1957's Operation Plumbbob (a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plumbbob">"Operation Plumbob").
According to blood samples tested years later for HIV, 20 percent of all New York homosexual men who participated in the 1978 hepatitis B vaccine experiment are HIV-positive by this point (Goliszek).
American doctors give experimental hormone shots to hundreds of Haitian men confined to detention camps in Miami and Puerto Rico, causing the men to develop a condition known as gynecomastia, in which men develop full-sized breasts (Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).
The CDC continues its 1978 hepatitis B vaccine experiment in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, St. Louis and Denver, recruiting over 7,000 homosexual men in San Francisco alone (Goliszek).
The FDA prohibits the use of prison inmates in pharmaceutical drug trials, leading to the advent of the experimental drug testing centers industry (Sharav).
The first AIDS case appears in San Francisco (Goliszek).
(1981)
(1981 - 1993) The Seattle-based Genetic Systems Corporation begins an ongoing medical experiment called Protocol No. 126, in which cancer patients at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle are given bone marrow transplants that contain eight experimental proteins made by Genetic Systems, rather than standard bone marrow transplants; 19 human subjects die from complications directly related to the experimental treatment (Goliszek).
A deep diving experiment at Duke University causes test subject Leonard Whitlock to suffer permanent brain damage (Sharav).
The CDC acknowledges that a disease known as AIDS exists and confirms 26 cases of the disease -- all in previously healthy homosexuals living in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles -- again supporting the speculation that AIDS originated from the hepatitis B experiments from 1978 and 1980 (Goliszek).
(1982)
Thirty percent of the test subjects used in the CDC's hepatitis B vaccine experiment are HIV-positive by this point (Goliszek).
(1984)
SFBC Phase I research clinic founded in Miami, Fla. By 2005, it would become the largest experimental drug testing center in North America with centers in Miami and Montreal, running Phase I to Phase IV clinical trials (Drug Development-Technology.com).
(1985)
A former U.S. Army sergeant tries to sue the Army for using drugs on him in without his consent or even his knowledge in United States v. Stanley, 483 U.S. 669. Justice Antonin Scalia writes the decision, clearing the U.S. military from any liability in past, present or future medical experiments without informed consent (Merritte, et al..
(1987)
Philadelphia resident Doris Jackson discovers that researchers have removed her son's brain post mortem for medical study. She later learns that the state of Pennsylvania has a doctrine of "implied consent," meaning that unless a patient signs a document stating otherwise, consent for organ removal is automatically implied (Merritte, et al.).
(1988)
The U.S. Justice Department pays nine Canadian survivors of the CIA and Dr. Cameron's "psychic driving" experiments (1957 - 1964) $750,000 in out-of-court settlements, to avoid any further investigations into MKULTRA (Goliszek).
(1988 - 2001) The New York City Administration for Children's Services begins allowing foster care children living in about two dozen children's homes to be used in National Institutes of Health-sponsored (NIH) experimental AIDS drug trials. These children -- totaling 465 by the program's end -- experience serious side effects, including inability to walk, diarrhea, vomiting, swollen joints and cramps. Children's home employees are unaware that they are giving the HIV-infected children experimental drugs, rather than standard AIDS treatments (New York City ACS, Doran).
(1990)
The United States sends 1.7 million members of the armed forces, 22 percent of whom are African-American, to the Persian Gulf for the Gulf War ("Desert Storm"). More than 400,000 of these soldiers are ordered to take an experimental nerve agent medication called pyridostigmine, which is later believed to be the cause of Gulf War Syndrome -- symptoms ranging from skin disorders, neurological disorders, incontinence, uncontrollable drooling and vision problems -- affecting Gulf War veterans (Goliszek; Merritte, et al.).
The CDC and Kaiser Pharmaceuticals of Southern California inject 1,500 six-month-old black and Hispanic babies in Los Angeles with an "experimental" measles vaccine that had never been licensed for use in the United States. Adding to the risk, children less than a year old may not have an adequate amount of myelin around their nerves, possibly resulting in impaired neural development because of the vaccine. The CDC later admits that parents were never informed that the vaccine being injected into their children was experimental (Goliszek).
The FDA allows the U.S. Department of Defense to waive the Nuremberg Code and use unapproved drugs and vaccines in Operation Desert Shield (Sharav).
(1991)
In the May 27 issue of the Los Angeles Times, former U.S. Navy radio operator Richard Jenkins writes that he suffers from leukemia, chronic fatigue and kidney and liver disease as a result of the radiation exposure he received in 1958's Operation Hardtack (Goliszek).
While participating in a UCLA study that withdraws schizophrenics off of their medications, Tony LaMadrid commits suicide (Sharav).
(1992)
Columbia University's New York State Psychiatric Institute and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine give 100 males -- mostly African-American and Hispanic, all between the ages of six and 10 and all the younger brothers of juvenile delinquents -- 10 milligrams of fenfluramine (fen-fen) per kilogram of body weight in order to test the theory that low serotonin levels are linked to violent or aggressive behavior. Parents of the participants received $125 each, including a $25 Toys 'R' Us gift certificate (Goliszek).
(1993)
Researchers at the West Haven VA in Connecticut give 27 schizophrenics -- 12 inpatients and 15 functioning volunteers -- a chemical called MCPP that significantly increases their psychotic symptoms and, as researchers note, negatively affects the test subjects on a long-term basis ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
(1994)
In a double-blind experiment at New York VA Hospital, researchers take 23 schizophrenic inpatients off of their medications for a median of 30 days. They then give 17 of them 0.5 mg/kg amphetamine and six a placebo as a control, following up with PET scans at Brookhaven Laboratories. According to the researchers, the purpose of the experiment was "to specifically evaluate metabolic effects in subjects with varying degrees of amphetamine-induced psychotic exacerbation" ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
Albuquerque Tribune reporter Eileen Welsome receives a Pulitzer Prize for her investigative reporting into Col. Warren's plutonium experiments on patients at Strong Memorial Hospital in 1945 (Burton Report).
In a federally funded experiment at New York VA Medical Center, researchers give schizophrenic veterans amphetamine, even though central nervous system stimulants worsen psychotic symptoms in 40 percent of schizophrenics ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
Researchers at Bronx VA Medical Center recruit 28 schizophrenic veterans who are functioning in society and give them L-dopa in order to deliberately induce psychotic relapse ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
President Clinton appoints the Advisory Commission on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE), which finally reveals the horrific experiments conducted during the Cold War era in its ACHRE Report.
(1995)
A 19-year-old University of Rochester student named Nicole Wan dies from participating in an MIT-sponsored experiment that tests airborne pollutant chemicals on humans. The experiment pays $150 to human test subjects (Sharav).
In the Mar. 15 President's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE), former human subjects, including those who were used in experiments as children, give sworn testimonies stating that they were subjected to radiation experiments and/or brainwashed, hypnotized, drugged, psychologically tortured, threatened and even raped during CIA experiments. These sworn statements include:
Christina DeNicola's statement that, in Tucson, Ariz., from 1966 to 1976, "Dr. B" performed mind control experiments using drugs, post-hypnotic injection and drama, and irradiation experiments on her neck, throat, chest and uterus. She was only four years old when the experiments started.
Claudia Mullen's testimony that Dr. Sidney Gottlieb (of MKULTRA fame) used chemicals, radiation, hypnosis, drugs, isolation in tubs of water, sleep deprivation, electric shock, brainwashing and emotional, sexual and verbal abuse as part of mind control experiments that had the ultimate objective of turning her, who was only a child at the time, into the "perfect spy." She tells the advisory committee that researchers justified this abuse by telling her that she was serving her country "in their bold effort to fight Communism."
Suzanne Starr's statement that "a physician, who was retired from the military, got children from the mountains of Colorado for experiments." She says she was one of those children and that she was the victim of experiments involving environmental deprivation to the point of forced psychosis, spin programming, injections, rape and frequent electroshock and mind control sessions. "I have fought self-destructive programmed messages to kill myself, and I know what a programmed message is, and I don’t act on them," she tells the advisory committee of the experiments' long-lasting effects, even in her adulthood (Goliszek).
President Clinton publicly apologizes to the thousands of people who were victims of MKULTRA and other mind-control experimental programs (Sharav).
In Dr. Daniel P. van Kammen's study, "Behavioral vs. Biochemical Prediction of Clinical Stability Following Haloperidol Withdrawal in Schizophrenia," researchers recruit 88 veterans who are stabilized by their medications enough to make them functional in society, and hospitalize them for eight to 10 weeks. During this time, the researchers stop giving the veterans the medications that are enabling them to live in society, placing them back on a two- to four-week regimen of the standard dose of Haldol. Then, the veterans are "washed-out," given lumbar punctures and put under six-week observation to see who would relapse and suffer symptomatic schizophrenia once again; 50 percent do ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
President Clinton appoints the National Bioethics Advisory Committee (Sharav).
Justice Edward Greenfield of the New York State Supreme Court rules that parents do not have the right to volunteer their mentally incapacitated children for non-therapeutic medical research studies and that no mentally incapacitated person whatsoever can be used in a medical experiment without informed consent (Sharav).
(1996)
Professor Adil E. Shamoo of the University of Maryland and the organization Citizens for Responsible Care and Research sends a written testimony on the unethical use of veterans in medical research to the U.S. Senate's Committee on Governmental Affairs, stating: "This type of research is on-going nationwide in medical centers and VA hospitals supported by tens of millions of dollars of taxpayers money. These experiments are high risk and are abusive, causing not only physical and psychic harm to the most vulnerable groups but also degrading our society’s system of basic human values. Probably tens of thousands of patients are being subjected to such experiments" ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
The Department of Defense admits that Gulf War soldiers were exposed to chemical agents; however, 33 percent of all military personnel afflicted with Gulf War Syndrome never left the United States during the war, discrediting the popular mainstream belief that these symptoms are a result of exposure to Iraqi chemical weapons (Merritte, et al.).
In a federally funded experiment at West Haven VA in Connecticut, Yale University researchers give schizophrenic veterans amphetamine, even though central nervous system stimulants worsen psychotic symptoms in 40 percent of schizophrenics ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
President Clinton issues a formal apology to the subjects of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and their families (Sharav).
(1997)
In order to expose unethical medical experiments that provoke psychotic relapse in schizophrenic patients, the Boston Globe publishes a four-part series entitled "Doing Harm: Research on the Mentally Ill" (Sharav).
Researchers give 26 veterans at a VA hospital a chemical called Yohimbine to purposely induce post-traumatic stress disorder ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
In order to create a "psychosis model," University of Cincinnati researchers give 16 schizophrenic patients at Cincinnati VA amphetamine in order to provoke repeats bouts of psychosis and eventually produce "behavioral sensitization" (Sharav).
National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) researchers give schizophrenic veterans amphetamine, even though central nervous system stimulants worsen psychotic symptoms in 40 percent of schizophrenics ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
In an experiment sponsored by the U.S. government, researchers withhold medical treatment from HIV-positive African-American pregnant women, giving them a placebo rather than AIDS medication (Sharav).
Researchers give amphetamine to 13 schizophrenic patients in a repetition of the 1994 "amphetamine challenge" at New York VA Hospital. As a result, the patients experience psychosis, delusions and hallucinations. The researchers claim to have informed consent ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
On Sept. 18, victims of unethical medical experiments at major U.S. research centers, including the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) testify before the National Bioethics Advisory Committee (Sharav).
(1999)
Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D. testifies on "The Unethical Use of Human Beings in High-Risk Research Experiments" before the U.S. House of Representatives' House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, alerting the House on the use of American veterans in VA Hospitals as human guinea pigs and calling for national reforms ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
Doctors at the University of Pennsylvania inject 18-year-old Jesse Gelsinger with an experimental gene therapy as part of an FDA-approved clinical trial. He dies four days later and his father suspects that he was not fully informed of the experiment's risk (Goliszek)
During a clinical trial investigating the effectiveness of Propulsid for infant acid reflux, nine-month-old Gage Stevens dies at Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh (Sharav).
(2000)
The Department of Defense begins declassifying the records of Project 112, including SHAD, and locating and assisting the veterans who were exposed to live toxins and chemical agents as part of Project 112. Many of them have already died (Goliszek).
President Clinton authorizes the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Act, which compensates the Department of Energy workers who sacrificed their health to build the United States' nuclear defenses (Sharav).
The U.S. Air Force and rocket maker Lockheed Martin sponsor a Loma Linda University study that pays 100 Californians $1,000 to eat a dose of perchlorate -- a toxic component of rocket fuel that causes cancer, damages the thyroid gland and hinders normal development in children and fetuses -- every day for six months. The dose eaten by the test subjects is 83 times the safe dose of perchlorate set by the State of California, which has perchlorate in some of its drinking water. This Loma Linda study is the first large-scale study to use human subjects to test the harmful effects of a water pollutant and is "inherently unethical," according to Environmental Working Group research director Richard Wiles (Goliszek, Envirnomental Working Group).
(2001)
Healthy 27-year-old Ellen Roche dies in a challenge study at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland (Sharav).
On its website, the FDA admits that its policy to include healthy children in human experiments "has led to an increasing number of proposals for studies of safety and pharmacokinetics, including those in children who do not have the condition for which the drug is intended" (Goliszek).
During a tobacco industry-financed Alzheimer's experiment at Case Western University in Cleveland, Elaine Holden-Able dies after she drinks a glass of orange juice containing a dissolved dietary supplement (Sharav).
Radiologist Scott Scheer of Pennsylvania dies from kidney failure, severe anemia and possibly lupus -- all caused by blood pressure drugs he was taking as part of a five-year clinical trial. After his death, his family sues the Institutional Review Board of Main Line Hospitals, the hospital that oversaw the study, and two doctors. Investigators from the federal Office for Human Research Protections, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, later conclude in a Dec. 20, 2002 letter to Scheer's oldest daughter: "Your father apparently was not told about the risk of hydralazine-induced lupus … OHRP found that certain unanticipated problems involving risks to subjects or others were not promptly reported to appropriate institutional officials" (Willen and Evans, "Doctor Who Died in Drug Test Was Betrayed by System He Trusted.")
In Higgins and Grimes v. Kennedy Krieger Institute The Maryland Court of Appeals makes a landmark decision regarding the use of children as test subjects, prohibiting non-therapeutic experimentation on children on the basis of "best interest of the individual child" (Sharav).
(2002)
President George W. Bush signs the Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act (BPCA), offering pharmaceutical companies six-month exclusivity in exchange for running clinical drug trials on children. This will of course increase the number of children used as human test subjects (Hammer Breslow).
(2003)
Two-year-old Michael Daddio of Delaware dies of congestive heart failure. After his death, his parents learn that doctors had performed an experimental surgery on him when he was five months old, rather than using the established surgical method of repairing his congenital heart defect that the parents had been told would be performed. The established procedure has a 90- to 95-percent success rate, whereas the inventor of the procedure performed on baby Daddio would later be fired from his hospital in 2004 (Willen and Evans, "Parents of Babies Who Died in Delaware Tests Weren't Warned").
(2004)
In his BBC documentary "Guinea Pig Kids" and BBC News article of the same name, reporter Jamie Doran reveals that children involved in the New York City foster care system were unwitting human subjects in experimental AIDS drug trials from 1988 to, in his belief, present times (Doran).
(2005)
In response to the BBC documentary and article "Guinea Pig Kids", the New York City Administration of Children's Services (ACS) sends out an Apr. 22 press release admitting that foster care children were used in experimental AIDS drug trials, but says that the last trial took place in 2001 and thus the trials are not continuing, as BBC reporter Jamie Doran claims. The ACS gives the extent and statistics of the experimental drug trials, based on its own records, and contracts the Vera Institute of Justice to conduct "an independent review of ACS policy and practice regarding the enrollment of HIV-positive children in foster care in clinical drug trials during the late 1980s and 1990s" (New York City ACS).
In exchange for receiving $2 million from the American Chemical Society, the EPA proposes the Children's Health Environmental Exposure Research Study (CHEERS) to learn how children ranging from infancy to three years old ingest, inhale and absorb chemicals by exposing children from a poor, predominantly black area of Duval County, Fla., to these toxins. Due to pressure from activist groups, negative media coverage and two Democratic senators, the EPA eventually decides to drop the study on Apr. 8, 2005 (Organic Consumers Association).
Bloomberg releases a series of reports suggesting that SFBC, the largest experimental drug testing center of its time, exploits immigrant and other low-income test subjects and runs tests with limited credibility due to violations of both the FDA's and SFBC's own testing guidelines (Bloomberg).
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Willen, Liz and David Evans. "Doctor Who Died in Drug Test Was Betrayed by System He Trusted." Bloomberg. Nov. 2, 2005.
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