Fwd: FW: EMAIL ACTION ALERT - The Ghost of Medical Atrocities: What's Next, After the Unveiling?

[Guest guest]

Mon, 29 Dec 2003 13:26:48 -0900

Sandy Mintz

FW: EMAIL ACTION ALERT - The Ghost of Medical Atrocities: What's Next,

After the Unveiling?

'ParentsofKidsAdultswithAutism (AT) groups (DOT) msn. com'

 

 

From Teresa:

 

[Perhaps some autism folks would like to write a Letter to Editor of NYTimes

and to suggest thimerosal's adverse effects and the CDC coverup (eg, 1-2) as

" just another " medical atrocity. Following the article are several citations

including URLs for Weldon's letter to CDC, O'Meara's InsightMag article,

plus what shots still contain thimerosal, including the flu shot. May I

suggest, if you write the times, don't just forward this email. Instead, use

the citations in support of your letter and use this email's first three

lines (ie, the article citation and url) as a way to indicate what prompted

your letter.]

 

 

The Ghost of Medical Atrocities: What's Next, After the Unveiling?

By HOWARD MARKEL, M.D.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/23/health/23ESSA.html

 

Ever since 1972, when the American public first learned about the Tuskegee

syphilis research that subjected African-American men to scientific

experiments without their consent, the medical profession has had much

explaining to do about its past.

 

Since then, several disturbing instances have come to light. In those cases,

scientists, physicians and the government-sanctioned research or treatments

that we would today consider unethical, like trials of untested vaccines or

medications on mentally retarded children and prisoners.

 

Increasingly, public apologies have been made to smooth over these clinical

transgressions. Yet the doctor in me wonders whether these gestures will

cure what ails us.

 

Since 2002, five states - Virginia, Oregon, North Carolina, South Carolina

and California - have publicly apologized to people who were forcibly

sterilized under laws in effect from the early 1900's until the 1970's.

Thirty-three states enacted such laws in this period, and about 60,000 women

and men were sterilized. All were deemed " unfit to reproduce " by the medical

experts of the day.

 

When these sterilization laws were written, many d to a simplistic

version of genetics called eugenics and hoped to improve American society by

encouraging the " healthy " to reproduce while simultaneously preventing those

with " deleterious inherited traits " from doing so. Under this rubric, mental

retardation, insanity and even criminal behavior were considered hereditary

and the " carriers " of these traits a danger to future generations.

 

Sadly, those targeted for reproductive quarantine were already defined as

outcasts by a white majority: the mentally ill or retarded, " sexual

deviants, " the impoverished, African-Americans and immigrants.

 

The recent series of public apologies for forced sterilizations has unfolded

with markedly different results, depending on who did the apologizing and

the motives of the person or group.

 

In March, with no survivors on hand to hear it, Gray Davis, then the

governor of California, issued an apology for the 20,000 forcible

sterilizations conducted in his state. In contrast, the previous December,

Gov. Michael F. Easley of North Carolina not only made a meaningful apology

to the families of the 7,500 victims of his state's mandatory sterilization

laws, he also ensured that their stories would be remembered by creating a

special historical archive. And last month, Dr. William Applegate, the dean

of the Wake Forest School of Medicine apologized for his institution's

involvement in these forced sterilizations.

 

Some activists are now eager to broker a formal apology from Gov. Jennifer

Granholm to the 3,700 people sterilized in Michigan. But Alexandra Minna

Stern, a historian of medicine at the University of Michigan, said the issue

was far deeper than merely uttering words of contrition.

 

" The biggest danger of the public apologies is that they too readily allow

us to blame our predecessors as being scientifically misguided or evil and

pat ourselves on the back for an enlightened, morally informed present, " she

said.

 

Thankfully we have moved out of an era of heavy-handed, coercive

sterilization statutes, but many of the era's ethical issues remain.

 

Today, there is a great risk of societal pressures more subtly influencing

reproductive choices thanks to an ever-expanding repertoire of genetic

reproductive technologies, therapies and prenatal genetic screening tests.

 

Dr. Paul A. Lombardo, a bioethicist at the University of Virginia, worked

successfully last year with his state's Legislature to commemorate Carrie

Buck, a young woman sterilized against her will in 1924 after eugenics field

workers diagnosed her, her mother and, by assumption, Carrie's 7-month-old

daughter, Vivian, as " feebleminded. " Ms. Buck's case was contested all the

way to the Supreme Court where Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. famously

opined, " Three generations of imbeciles are enough. "

 

Although there is a symbolic value to apologizing for the sins of our

fathers, Dr. Lombardo admits that these " are limited ways of addressing

public harms done in the past. "

 

Reflecting on her experience as a member of the citizens committee that

convinced President Bill Clinton in 1997 to apologize for the government's

role in the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, Susan Reverby, a historian at

Wellesley College, said: " There needs to be more than a television talk show

format of confession and a pledge for repentance. Relying only on emotion,

while critical and cathartic, is a temporary fix, at best. "

 

These apologies would be far more meaningful if they prompted us to reflect

on some troubling aspects of medical research financed by federal agencies

and American pharmaceutical companies in developing countries today, like

experimental drug trials in Africa, where there are markedly less strict

regulations on patients' rights.

 

Perhaps the cruelest aspect of such trials is how comparatively little these

federal agencies or companies do to ameliorate or prevent the scourges that

are killing Africans and others by the tens of thousands every day.

 

AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, measles and diarrheal diseases are all major

killers that we can actually do something about now. Decades hence, will our

successors conclude that the impulses that nurtured experiments like

Tuskegee or public health policies like eugenic sterilizations simply moved

offshore in the early 21st century?

 

The stunning advances in medical progress have created new problems as we

begin to dissect exactly how we arrived at some of this lifesaving

knowledge. But after-the-fact apologies are soothing balms, not panaceas.

 

One of the greatest emerging ethical challenges in medical practice,

research and policy goes well beyond identifying missteps based on human

blind spots or outright prejudices embedded in past quests for cures. We

must make sure we don't repeat them.

 

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

 

* * * * * * *

Regarding thimerosal's adverse effects and the cover-up, see

Letter to the CDC from Congressman Dave Weldon, MD,(R-FL)

http://www.house.gov/weldon/issues/autism/pdf

 

Overview of the thimerosal's adverse effects and the coverup:

CDC Study Raises Level of Suspicion.

http://www.insightmag.com/news/573542.html

 

Thimerosal is 49,6% ethylmercury by weight (1) and is added to some

vaccines, including most (but not all) flu shots. Here's a damning exerpt

from the insight article:

 

A quote from researcher David Geier, MD, PhD: " We went to Atlanta, " he

continues, " to the CDC, and looked at the VSD [Vaccine Safety Data] data.

There is

thimerosal-containing DTaP [diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine] and

thimerosal-free DTaP, so we asked a question: Among children that got a

minimum of

either three consecutive thimerosal-containing DTaPs or three consecutive

thimerosal-free DTaPs, was there a difference in the number of autism cases

in the two

groups? We found mega differences. More than 20 times higher. The rate of

autism in the children that got more than three doses of

thimerosal-containing DTaP

vaccines was much, much higher. Almost all the children that have autism

in that group were the ones that got the thimerosal-containing DTaP vaccine.

The more

thimerosal the greater the cases of autism. "

--O'Meara KP. CDC Study Raises Level of Suspicion.

http://www.insightmag.com/news/573542.html

 

If you are wondering which vaccines currently contain ethylmercury and which

do not, visit:

http://www.vaccinesafety.edu/thi-table.htm

and

http://www.vaccinesafety.edu/thi-table.htm#2

 

For information about which flu shots contain ethylmercury and which do not,

visit some CDC-created information at:

Flu Vaccine 2004 Mercury Content

http://www.safeminds.org/NewChart.pdf

 

* * * * * * *

 

The material in this post is distributed without profit to those

who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included

information for research and educational purposes.

For more information go to:

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html

http://oregon.uoregon.edu/~csundt/documents.htm

If you wish to use copyrighted material from this email for

purposes that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission

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Thank you.

 

 

 

 

abmd/

 

 

Sandy Mintz

http://www.vaccinationnews.com/

http://www.vaccinationnews.com/Scandals/past_scandals.htm

http://www.vaccinationnews.com/Out_of_Control/past_ool.htm

 

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