Repeal of Thimerosal Rider under Omnibus Approriations Bill Thu, 20 Feb 2003 Congress has acted! On Valentine’s Day, Congress passed the Omnibus Appropriation Act, repealing the thimerosal protection rider that had been slipped into Homeland Security Act. Vaccine manufacturers are no longer protected from liability. Parents may exercise their right…
Fuzzy ethics of nonlethal chemical weapons_Christian Science Monitor Sun, 16 Feb 2003 ON February 5, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and General Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee the US was prepared to use chemical incapacitants in a war with Iraq. (An audio…
Drug Testing Debate – Parenting Mag 4 Pt. Series Tue, 22 Oct 2002 Parenting Magazine published a 5-part report about the impact on children of FDA’s “The Pediatric Rule.” That Rule provides drug companies six month patent extension on drugs tested in children. This financial windfall could translate into some…
Last Journey of Artificial Heart Recipient – NYT Tue, 8 Oct 2002 Sheryl Gay Stolberg’s drama-filled, but sobering article in The New York Times, chronicles the ordeal of James Quinn, the subject of an extraordinary and wrenching medical experiment in which his heart was replaced with an artificial one. From…
Advisory Panel: What Protections for Children, fetuses, embryos? Wed, 30 Oct 2002 The Washington Post reports that the administration has issued a new charter for a federal advisory committee extending safeguards for human subjects to include embryos and fetuses along with children and adults. Whatever the intent of the Bush…
Institute of Medicine (IOM) Panel Misses the Point re Test Subjects October 3, 2002 See also the following Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences documents: IOM Report: Responsible Research: A Systems Approach to Protecting Research Participants. Oct. 3, 2002 (Adobe Acrobat document) IOM Public Briefing – October…
October 18, 2002. Pediatric Drug Tests_CNN / NYT Editorial Children are increasingly being exploited for profit by the biomedical industry. Between 1983 and 1997, children had been protected from medical experiments that are not in their best interest. But in 1997 Congress passed the FDA Modernization Act (FDAMA), providing a…
Conflicts of Interest Rampant in Medical Research – NEJM / News Tribune (Wash) Thu, 24 Oct 2002 A Duke University survey published in The New England Journal of Medicine today, confirms the claims made by critics: clinical research at academic institutions is not governed by ethical standards–clinical research is entirely…
Duke Survey Clinical trials: Research Conflicts of Interest Violate ethical Guidelines_UPI Sun, 27 Oct 2002 A major Duke University survey of 108 U.S. medical schools reveals that medical institutions fail utterly to meet international standards aimed at ensuring the integrity of clinical research and the safety of the subjects. Conflicts…
Research Protection: SCIENCE / Fed Paper Mon, 28 Oct 2002 SCIENCE magazine (below) reported about “the bumpy road” of Dr. Greg Koski’s tenure as director of the federal Office of Human Research Protections (OHRP), and how his resignation is being perceived by some. An article in The FEDERAL PAPER focused…
Police recruit volunteers to binge on drugs-alcohol_ WSJ Tue, 29 Oct 2002 In 1998, The Washington Post reported about the accidental death of a volunteer firefighter who had been recruited by the police to be a test subject whose purpose was to get drunk: “A Lanham man who volunteered to…
US Troops Were Subjected to Wider Toxic Testing_NYT Wed, 9 Oct 2002 “At a time when our nation may be called upon to fight a war to protect Americans from chemical and biological terrorism, it is tragic to learn that four decades earlier, some of America’s soldiers and sailors were…
