An editorial in today's New York Times is a follow-up to its riveting report by Ian Urbina on the recommendation by an Institute of Medicine panel to
lift 1978 federal restrictions on medical experiments on prisoners. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/13/us/13inmates.html?
Stanford University researchers used 61 inmates ranging in age from 14 to 18 at a California Youth Authority (CYA) correctional center in an experiment testing the psychotropic drug, Depakote.
Three reports illustrate the wide and deepening disconnect between medicine under the influence of pharmaceutical industry marketing goals and scientific evidence that contradicts current practice and public health policies:
The independent Institute of Science in Society (ISIS) challenges the report issued by the UK government medicines oversight agency, MHRA (equivalent to US FDA), absolving itself and those involved from any responsibility for a catastrophic human experiment that nearly killed six healthy volunteers.
Minnesota Attorney General Supports Widow in Zoloft Suicide Case Tue, 22 Mar 2005 A press release from the law firm, Baum Hedlund announces that Minnesota’s State Attorney General filed a legal brief refuting Pfizer’s claim that “it should be immune from liability for failing to warn about dangerous side effects…
"The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential," reads the Nuremberg Code of 1947, which was drafted in direct response to the sheer barbarity of Nazi-era medical experiments on Jews and other captive groups.
