The Baltimore Sun reports (below) that in a paper scheduled for publication in the journal Epidemiology and Infection, a Harvard University-led team proposes that a vitamin D deficiency caused by inadequate winter sun exposure may predispose people to infection.
Disease mongering: " This program has been developed for people who, while in the prime of their lives, are at high risk for developing a debilitating mental illness."
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.
Tune in tonight–Monday– to Court TV: the subject is medical experimentation on prisoners–What does this say about our moral climate?
The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity from Antiquity to the Present , by Professor Roy Porter , Fontana, Press , 1997. Below are a few–still very relevant–quotes…
BBC reports: "TeGenero, a German pharmaceutical company, said it could not continue in business.Because of the fallout from the UK trial, it was impossible to attract investment, TeGenero said."
One day following a rport in The New York Times, Sanifo-Aventis, manufacturer of Ketek, suspended the trial in children. The FDA has not announced any action.
ABC News reports that antipsychotic drugs are being tested on toddlers at Harvard University affiliate hospital, Massachusetts General Children’s Hospital. Post your comments at: http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/05/tots_used_as_hu.html
When the Times refers to an experiment as "bold and controversial" the reporter is sanitizing the fact that the experiment is UNETHICAL—it violates medicine’s cardinal rule "First, do no harm."
Bbioethicists are seizing the opportunity to expand their own marketability. The UK publication, NATURE, reports about the latest bioethics gimmick that has sprung up in California– ‘dial-an-ethicist’—at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics.
