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ORPHANS AS GUINEA PIGS in our Nazi medical/science culture

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Wednesday, April 07, 2004 12:52 PM

ORPHANS AS GUINEA PIGS in our Nazi medical/science culture

This is from a subscription service called Oread Daily. . .ORPHANS AS GUINEA PIGSBritish drug giant GlaxoSmithKline stands accused ofusing orphansand babies as young as three months old as guinea pigsinpotentially dangerous medical experiments. Glaxo andother firmssponsored experiments on the children from IncarnationChildren'sCenter. Licensed by the New York State Department ofSocial Servicesand the New York City Agency for Children's Services,the center wasestablished in 1988 through the collaborative effortsof TheCatholic Home Bureau (Archdiocese of New York), TheColumbiaUniversity Department of Pediatrics, The HarlemHospital PediatricAIDS Program and the Samuel and May Rudin Foundation.The involved children had either been infected withHIV or born toHIV-positive mothers. Their parents were dead,untraceable or deemedunfit to look after them. Normally trials on childrenwould requireparental consent but, as the infants are in care, NewYork'sauthorities hold that role.According to documents Glaxo has sponsored at leastfour medicaltrials since 1995 using Hispanic and black children atIncarnation.The documents give details of all clinical trials inthe US andreveal the experiments sponsored by Glaxo weredesigned to testthe 'safety and tolerance' of AIDS medications, someof which havepotentially dangerous side effects.The city health department has launched aninvestigation into claimsthat more than 100 children at Incarnation were usedin 36experiments - at least four co-sponsored by Glaxo. Oneinvolvedgiving children as young as four a high-dosagecocktail of sevendrugs at one time. Another looked at the reaction insix-month-oldbabies to a double dose of measles vaccine.In 1997 an experiment co-sponsored by Glaxo usedchildren fromIncarnation to 'obtain tolerance, safety andpharmacokinetic' datafor Herpes drugs. In a more recent experiment, thechildren wereused to test AZT. A third experiment sponsored byGlaxo and US drugfirm Pfizer investigated the 'long-term safety' ofanti-bacterialdrugs on three-month-old babies.The medical establishment has defended the trialsarguing theyenabled these children to obtain state-of-the-arttherapy they wouldotherwise not have received for potentially fatalillnesses.However, health campaigners argue there is adifference betweenproviding the latest drugs and experimentation. Theyclaim many ofthe experiments were 'phase 1 trials' - among the mostrisky - andthat HIV tests for babies were not a reliableindicator of actualinfection and therefore toxic drugs could have beengiven to healthyinfants. HIV drugs are similar to those used inchemotherapy and canhave serious side-effects.A letter from the Alliance for Human ResearchProtection to theDept. of Health and Human Services stated, "We havelearned that aseries of Phase I and Phase II drug experiments wereconducted oninfants and children who were under the guardianshipof the New YorkCity Agency for Children's Services (ACS), and livingat IncarnationChildren's Center, a foster care facility undercontract with ACS.The test subjects were children diagnosed with HIVinfection - insome cases infants who were merely "presumed" to beHIV-infected.Phase I and Phase II experiments involve the greatestlevel of riskand discomfort for children insofar as they test thesafety andtoxicity of the drugs as well as maximum dosetolerance."Vera Sharav, president of the Alliance for HumanResearchProtection, said the children had been treated like'laboratoryanimals'. 'These are some of the most vulnerableindividuals in thecountry and there appears to be a policy of givingdrug firms accessto them,' she said. 'Throughout the history of medicalresearch wehave seen prisoners abused, the mentally ill abusedand now poorkids in a care home.' Sharav has urged the US Food andDrugAdministration to investigate and has demanded fulldisclosure ofall adverse effects suffered by the children,including deaths.Brooklyn Democrat Bill de Blasio is also demandingthat New York'sAdministration for Children's Services, which approvedthe trials,reveal who gave consent and on what grounds.The Incarnation trials were run by Columbia UniversityMedicalCenter doctors. Columbia spokeswoman Annie Bayne saidthere had beenno clinical trials at Incarnation since 2000 and thatconsent forthe children was provided by the Administration forChildren'sServices. Sources: Alliance for Human ResearchProtection, Guardian(UK), Observer (UK), Columbia University MedicalCenter.

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