Targeting Prisoners for Medical Experiments

In response to an article in the NY TIMES, Aug. 13, 2006
Panel Suggests Using Inmates in Drug Trials


“Free and informed consent becomes pretty questionable when prisoners don’t hold the keys to their own cells,” Professor Murphy said, “and in many cases they can’t read, yet they are signing a document that it practically takes a law degree to understand.” - Daniel S. Murphy, Professor of Criminal Justice and former prisoner

BL Fisher Note:
Lawyer and self styled bioethicist Lawrence Gostin recently convinced the prestigious Institute of Medicine to call on the pharmaceutical industry to use America's 2.3 million prisoners as guinea pigs for experimental drugs and vaccines. Lamenting the lack of private citizen volunteers for potentially toxic drug and vaccine trials, the Institute of Medicine apparently is helping one of its biggest funders - the pharmaceutical industry - to experiment on captive populations in the name of the "greater good." Professor Gostin preaches utilitarianism, a 19th century consequentialist theory branded as a pseudo- ethic by the Nuremberg Tribunal after doctors and scientists on trial for forced experimentation on captive prisoners during World War II used the "greater good" defense to justify their actions.

Gostin was paid by the CDC to create the Model State Emergency Health Power Act, which was rammed through many states after September 11, 2001. This legislation took away civil liberties in order to allow state militia to arrest, quarantine and force vaccination and experimental drugs on citizens without their informed consent or access to legal counsel whenever public health officials convince the Governor to declare a public health "emergency." An HIV/AIDS activist, Gostin has stated that "The HIV'AIDS pandemic is probably the defining historical event of the late 20th century and threatens to further define our future." Gostin is working with others in academia and public health agencies to pave the way for forced use of experimental HIV vaccines on captive prison populations in preparation for forced use of HIV vaccine by the entire U.S. population without securing voluntary informed consent from individuals.

There are 2.3 million Americans in prison today. They are fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters. They are behind bars for crimes big and small. Some are innocent. They are all human beings.

I am reminded of the warning by holocaust survivor Martin Niemoller: "In Germany, they came first for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up."Beware the elitists who come to take away your human rights in the name of the greater good.