Horrific medical tests of past raise concerns for today.

[1069]

Horrific medical tests of past raise concerns for today

Arthur Caplan, Ph.D.
msnbc.com contributor

The astounding revelation that U.S. medical researchers intentionally gave Guatemalans gonorrhea and syphilis more than 60 years ago is so horrifying that we want to believe that what happened then could never happen today. We want to believe that doctors are treating the poor, vulnerable and those outside the U.S. with more care and respect.

But are they? Have we really learned what we should have from the travesty of past medical experiments?

Article Here


Damn, I'm proud to be an American when I hear about crap like this.
So nice to live in a good Christian nation. :lol:

 

[jallman]

Horrific medical tests of past raise concerns for today

Arthur Caplan, Ph.D.
msnbc.com contributor

The astounding revelation that U.S. medical researchers intentionally gave Guatemalans gonorrhea and syphilis more than 60 years ago is so horrifying that we want to believe that what happened then could never happen today. We want to believe that doctors are treating the poor, vulnerable and those outside the U.S. with more care and respect.

But are they? Have we really learned what we should have from the travesty of past medical experiments?

Article Here


Damn, I'm proud to be an American when I hear about crap like this.
So nice to live in a good Christian nation. :lol:

Well at least I now know not to sleep with any Guatemalans....

 

[Harry Guerrilla]

Horrific medical tests of past raise concerns for today

Arthur Caplan, Ph.D.
msnbc.com contributor

The astounding revelation that U.S. medical researchers intentionally gave Guatemalans gonorrhea and syphilis more than 60 years ago is so horrifying that we want to believe that what happened then could never happen today. We want to believe that doctors are treating the poor, vulnerable and those outside the U.S. with more care and respect.

But are they? Have we really learned what we should have from the travesty of past medical experiments?

Article Here

Damn, I'm proud to be an American when I hear about crap like this.
So nice to live in a good Christian nation. :lol:

Meh, during the Manhattan project they injected unknowing Americans with plutonium.
I'm sure they've done similar things in the near past that we don't know about.

 

[Orion]

Most of the major world powers have a history of unethical medical experimentation, so in that regard I am not surprised. It's going to keep happening though.

 

[Hicup]

You know those ads you hear on the radio for drug studies? Avoid them.. Just sayin..


Tim-

 

[tryreading]

Horrific medical tests of past raise concerns for today

Arthur Caplan, Ph.D.
msnbc.com contributor

The astounding revelation that U.S. medical researchers intentionally gave Guatemalans gonorrhea and syphilis more than 60 years ago is so horrifying that we want to believe that what happened then could never happen today. We want to believe that doctors are treating the poor, vulnerable and those outside the U.S. with more care and respect.

But are they? Have we really learned what we should have from the travesty of past medical experiments?

Article Here


Damn, I'm proud to be an American when I hear about crap like this.
So nice to live in a good Christian nation. :lol:

Still, today, you might hear something like this on the news:

Pfizer (or Merck, or whatever pharmaceutical company) is hopeful of FDA approval of drug 'X' as soon as current trials are completed in Mexico.



Third world people are still used for testing somewhere between animal trials and 'hey, looks like we can sell it to white people now.'

Its cheaper, data can be hidden or disposed of easily, and there's no oversight because the FDA does not have the resources to follow up on these studies.


http://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-01-08-00510.pdf

 

[Orion]

Still, today, you might hear something like this on the news:

Pfizer (or Merck, or whatever pharmaceutical company) is hopeful of FDA approval of drug 'X' as soon as current trials are completed in Mexico.



Third world people are still used for testing somewhere between animal trials and 'hey, looks like we can sell it to white people now.'

Its cheaper, data can be hidden or disposed of easily, and there's no oversight because the FDA does not have the resources to follow up on these studies.


http://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-01-08-00510.pdf

They're still volunteers though, even if they are desperately poor. No one is forcing anyone to do drug testing these days. Well, most of the time anyway.

 

[tryreading]

They're still volunteers though, even if they are desperately poor. No one is forcing anyone to do drug testing these days. Well, most of the time anyway.

Sure. Even the children. Right?

Seems people don't understand anymore that wrong is wrong. Even if the goddam victim somehow consents.

 

[1069]

They're still volunteers though, even if they are desperately poor. No one is forcing anyone to do drug testing these days. Well, most of the time anyway.

Not force, but lies, coercion, and trickery.
With the Tuskegee Experiment, for instance, they used poor illiterate rural blacks in the Jim Crow South.
These 400 men already had syphilis, and were offered free "treatment" at the government research clinic.
For forty years, instead of treating them, researchers studied the progressive devastation wreaked upon them by their untreated disease.
During that time, the men infected their wives, who gave birth to infected children.

The researchers told them there was no "cure" (a lie; penicillin was known to be effective), but that they might improve if they submitted to various "treatments" (actually merely tests and experiments) which were being generously offered at absolutely no charge.
Researchers also told them that if they sought treatment elsewhere or spoke to any other medical professional, they'd forfeit their right to recieve free treatment at the "clinic".
"Treatments" included invasive tests such as spinal taps to see if the syphilis had invaded their cerebrospinal fluid and advanced to their brains yet.

Because these men were rural, isolated, uneducated, ignorant, impoverished, and marginalized, they had no way of knowing what most of the rest of the US already knew: that syphilis was easily curable simply by taking some antibiotic pills.
Researchers deliberately kept them in the dark about this, threatened them with the loss of treatment if they spoke to any other doctors, and documented their decline and death and the infection of their families over four decades.

But hey: there was no "force". None whatsoever.
The victims voluntarily went to the clinic each week and consented to these horrific procedures being performed on them, because they thought they were being "treated".

 

[Orion]

I was mostly referring to the comment that drug companies outsource their testing to Mexico. As long as the destination country has laws against illegal medical tests, then the volunteers have legal protections. The reason why this crap can happen is because the host countries do not look out for their people. The example above... that was during the Jim Crow days, so of course blacks got targeted. If that happened now, the drug execs would be thrown in jail along with all their accomplices.

I am not saying it's right. The tests were horrible and inexcusable, but it's just further proof that business must be regulated in order to protect society. Businesses will never adhere to morals or ethics as long as there are no laws or enforcements in place. It's the whole reason why factories have relocated to China and India. They care more about their bottom line than treating people well, and the host nations enable it.

 

[1069]

Here's a general overview of some other US medical research atrocities.

Human experimentation in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia