Presidential debates on ABC right now-both parties
Comments
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shokk,
Last Fall the Journal of Philanthophy issued a report that stated that middle income people gave proportionately More than wealthy people. I don't have it in front of me, but I read it and found it interesting.
Cherryl
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Shokk--with all due respect.
I already told you based on what. In the last election, well more than 93% of the faculties at the schools I cited said they would vote for Kerry. In some schools it was as high as 96%. That's not just leaning--that's completely fallen over. And I'll bet the Hollywood types you're thinking of are the ones who are in the news supporting various left-leaning causes, like AIDS, etc. So doesn't that prove someone's point--perhaps mine.
I responded to your earlier post regarding Republicans and Bill Gates, and now you're asking me to prove something completely different. If I supply you with studies that show people with higher IQ's tend to lean left politically, will you at least acknowledge my point before moving on.
If you don't think liberals are more open minded and caring about others beyond their own circles, how do you define a liberal? I'm curious. I should also point out that the terms "Democrat" and "liberal" are not synonymous. That is all Democrats are not liberals; most liberals vote the Democratic line, depending on the election. Some times they vote for third parties, but only if the parties are left of the Democrats.
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Anne I think a Liberal is someone that believes in big government and pro choice in a nut shell.........usually a pacifist........I don't believe for one minute that Liberals are more open minded then Conservatives and it seems to me that as much as Liberals go around preaching about tolerance as long as you believe like they do............they don't seem to care too much for anyone that is "right" of their circle..........jmo..............Shokk
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But now you have to define big government. Don't Republicans when they speak of big government mean "handouts" to those less well off. So isn't that part of what we call generosity, being willing to give a bigger piece of the money you pay in taxes to those less well off than yourself.
And doesn't open-minded mean being tolerant of people different from oneself: straights tolerant of gays, for example. Or accepting that each woman has a right to decide what's good for her and her body.
I think you're twisting the argument on its head. If, for example, you believe that abortion is wrong for you, I certainly wouldn't want you to do anything against your principles. In the same way I wouldn't expect you to tell me I couldn't have an abortion if an abortion was right for me. -- A bit late in the game for that-- LOL
And you can hardly fault us for wanting peace. To me, it sounds as though you're defining people who are open-minded and generous. In fact, aren't most of the things that define Republican positions preceded by anti-
anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-tax, anti-big government. About the only thing they're not anti is war.
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Anne-Shirley- I think you've missed the point about the passport breach. If it was just one candidate-- as when it happened to Bill Clinton-- the possibilities about it being dirty campaign tricks are greater than if it was all of the candidates. Also, if you only read the transcripts or speech,poetry as you call it, then you will only get a one dimensional view of the speech, rather than hearing the inflection in tone and seeing body language, which might totally change the interpretation of the words. When I listen to the "I have a dream" speech, the infliction in the tone of King's words are part of what gives me chills.
I think you just demonstrated what I dislike about feminism: putting men down.
Inna- we are finding more and more that we agree with. True feminism is supposed to mean equality among the genders, not one being superior. There is a segment of the feminist movement that is sometimes called feminazis who are all about prowomen meaning antimen. I completely reject this and for the longest time I avoided being thought of as a feminist as not to be associated with this group. In my opinion, when you say feminism took a wrong turn, you're talking about those who subscribe to a women being better than men, rather than the original and academic meaning of the cause.
Anne I think a Liberal is someone that believes in big government and pro choice in a nut shell.........usually a pacifist........I don't believe for one minute that Liberals are more open minded then Conservatives and it seems to me that as much as Liberals go around preaching about tolerance as long as you believe like they do............they don't seem to care too much for anyone that is "right" of their circle..........
You forgot about pro gay rights
. You might be right about some of this, as much as I hate to admit it. I want the right to make my own reproductive and relationship decisions without government interference. In some circles that might be a more "republican" school of thought, getting the government out of my personal life, except when it comes to social issues, republicans seem more likely to use a narrower definition of "morals" to judge and legislate what I can do with my body and my relationship. We have fundamental differences about fetuses as being part of the mother or having independent rights and those who are pro-choice general give the rights to living people who have been born. To me I have a hard time understanding why some republicans are against embryonic stem cell research, using embryos that would otherwise be destroyed which have already been harvested. Conservatives tout unproven science of the future that might not make it necessary to use embryonic stem cells for research but I believe we need cures right now. Anyway, back to your original point, I do think I am untolerant when people see my relationship as a lesbian as lesser or deserving of less rights and respect than that of my heterosexual counterparts. I am not tolerant when conservatives like representative Sally Kern say that gays are more of a danger than terrorists and preachers sermonize that we're going to hell. I wonder how many of the people who think Obama should have told Wright he was offended by that sermon have said the same thing to their own ministers or priests when similar things have been said about gays.
CherylH--I have seen similar statistics. If all wealthy people gave like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, a lot of the world's ills would be solved.
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Gap in Life Expectancy between Haves and Have-Nots: NYTimes 3/23
If we want to know what our current health care policies have done for this nation, here's something to think about: in the last 20 years the lowest socioeconomic group lagged further behind the most affluent. Life expectancy was higher for the most affluent in 1980 than for the most deprived group in 2000, and this is with all the medical and technological break throughs that had happened in the previous twenty years, which were considerable. The difference between poor black men and affluent white women was more than 14 years (66.9 years vs. 81.1 years).
Perhaps, for a while, we can leave the abstractions of race behind and look at the realities. The above described gap is huge. Other things to note: the rate of new AIDS cases is still 10 times as high among blacks as whites; and the proportion of black children hospitalized for asthma is almost four times the rate for white children.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that heart attack survivors with higher levels of education and income were much more likely to receive cardiac rehabilitation care, which lowers the risk of future heart problems. The odds of receiving colon cancer tests increase with a person's education and income.
Although all of the above ills cannot be resolved solely by implementing universal health care, certainly some of them can. We owe it to ourselves as well as to our communities to make sure that this election year we make the necessary changes in our health care system.
Go Hillary!
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Anneshirley,
It is known that women live longer that men. It is very suspicious that they comapring black men to white women and not black men to white men, don't you think ? I guess the gap wasn't big enough.
Actually I read studeis somewhere that Asian women and men live longer than whites.
Why do you think AIDS is more prevalent in the black community? I hope you don't subcribe to the pastor Wright's theory that the govenrment created the virus for the black community
That's what I was saying all the time, the black community needs to change its way of life. I am sure when they compare middle class whites to middle class blacks, there will be few differences in health, because the latter integrate into middle calss society and adopt a healthier life style , etc. When a poor peron eats mostly junk food what do you expect it's doing to his heart ?
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Anneshirley
Don't Republicans when they speak of big government mean "handouts" to those less well off. So isn't that part of what we call generosity, being willing to give a bigger piece of the money you pay in taxes to those less well off than yourself.
This is called wealth redistriubution, and I am against it. Why should sucessful people who worked hard for their money forced to give part of it to those who were too lazy to put the effort. Of course there are some who hit a rough patch: elderely , poor health . And of course children! But the rest of people need to work harder, sorry to say. I mean if one person makes his way through college studying during day and working at night to afford it and then has a good carreer and another one has spent her time "haniging out" and working minimum wage job, why should the first support the second ?
anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-tax, anti-big government. About the only thing they're not anti is war.
anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-tax, anti-big government. About the only thing they're not anti is war.
You can't paint us all the same. I am anti-tax, anti-big government.
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No comment. I believe both your posts prove my earlier points.
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Why do you think AIDS is more prevalent in the black community? I hope you don't subcribe to the pastor Wright's theory that the govenrment created the virus for the black community
I know that the government didn't create AIDS for the black community-- but I can see how someone might think so, if you consider that the government with the Tuskegees and syphillis from 1932-1972. In 1990 30% of blacks believe that to be either true or possible and considering that the "experiment" didn't end until 1972.
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The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment
The United States government did something that was wrong-deeply, profoundly, morally wrong. It was an outrage to our commitment to integrity and equality for all our citizens. . . . clearly racist. -President Clinton's apology for the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment to the eight remaining survivors, May 16, 1997For forty years between 1932 and 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) conducted an experiment on 399 black men in the late stages of syphilis. These men, for the most part illiterate sharecroppers from one of the poorest counties in Alabama, were never told what disease they were suffering from or of its seriousness. Informed that they were being treated for "bad blood,"1 their doctors had no intention of curing them of syphilis at all. The data for the experiment was to be collected from autopsies of the men, and they were thus deliberately left to degenerate under the ravages of tertiary syphilis-which can include tumors, heart disease, paralysis, blindness, insanity, and death. "As I see it," one of the doctors involved explained, "we have no further interest in these patients until they die."Using Human Beings as Laboratory AnimalsThe true nature of the experiment had to be kept from the subjects to ensure their cooperation. The sharecroppers' grossly disadvantaged lot in life made them easy to manipulate. Pleased at the prospect of free medical care-almost none of them had ever seen a doctor before-these unsophisticated and trusting men became the pawns in what James Jones, author of the excellent history on the subject, Bad Blood, identified as "the longest nontherapeutic experiment on human beings in medical history."The study was meant to discover how syphilis affected blacks as opposed to whites-the theory being that whites experienced more neurological complications from syphilis whereas blacks were more susceptible to cardiovascular damage. How this knowledge would have changed clinical treatment of syphilis is uncertain. Although the PHS touted the study as one of great scientific merit, from the outset its actual benefits were hazy. It took almost forty years before someone involved in the study took a hard and honest look at the end results, reporting that "nothing learned will prevent, find, or cure a single case of infectious syphilis or bring us closer to our basic mission of controlling venereal disease in the United States." When the experiment was brought to the attention of the media in 1972, news anchor Harry Reasoner described it as an experiment that "used human beings as laboratory animals in a long and inefficient study of how long it takes syphilis to kill someone."A Heavy Price in the Name of Bad ScienceBy the end of the experiment, 28 of the men had died directly of syphilis, 100 were dead of related complications, 40 of their wives had been infected, and 19 of their children had been born with congenital syphilis. How had these men been induced to endure a fatal disease in the name of science? To persuade the community to support the experiment, one of the original doctors admitted it "was necessary to carry on this study under the guise of a demonstration and provide treatment." At first, the men were prescribed the syphilis remedies of the day-bismuth, neoarsphenamine, and mercury-but in such small amounts that only 3 percent showed any improvement. These token doses of medicine were good public relations and did not interfere with the true aims of the study. Eventually, all syphilis treatment was replaced with "pink medicine"-aspirin. To ensure that the men would show up for a painful and potentially dangerous spinal tap, the PHS doctors misled them with a letter full of promotional hype: "Last Chance for Special Free Treatment." The fact that autopsies would eventually be required was also concealed. As a doctor explained, "If the colored population becomes aware that accepting free hospital care means a post-mortem, every darky will leave Macon County..." Even the Surgeon General of the United States participated in enticing the men to remain in the experiment, sending them certificates of appreciation after 25 years in the study.Following Doctors' OrdersIt takes little imagination to ascribe racist attitudes to the white government officials who ran the experiment, but what can one make of the numerous African Americans who collaborated with them? The experiment's name comes from the Tuskegee Institute, the black university founded by Booker T. Washington. Its affiliated hospital lent the PHS its medical facilities for the study, and other predominantly black institutions as well as local black doctors also participated. A black nurse, Eunice Rivers, was a central figure in the experiment for most of its forty years. The promise of recognition by a prestigious government agency may have obscured the troubling aspects of the study for some. A Tuskegee doctor, for example, praised "the educational advantages offered our interns and nurses as well as the added standing it will give the hospital." Nurse Rivers explained her role as one of passive obedience: "we were taught that we never diagnosed, we never prescribed; we followed the doctor's instructions!" It is clear that the men in the experiment trusted her and that she sincerely cared about their well-being, but her unquestioning submission to authority eclipsed her moral judgment. Even after the experiment was exposed to public scrutiny, she genuinely felt nothing ethical had been amiss.One of the most chilling aspects of the experiment was how zealously the PHS kept these men from receiving treatment. When several nationwide campaigns to eradicate venereal disease came to Macon County, the men were prevented from participating. Even when penicillin was discovered in the 1940s-the first real cure for syphilis-the Tuskegee men were deliberately denied the medication. During World War II, 250 of the men registered for the draft and were consequently ordered to get treatment for syphilis, only to have the PHS exempt them. Pleased at their success, the PHS representative announced: "So far, we are keeping the known positive patients from getting treatment." The experiment continued in spite of the Henderson Act (1943), a public health law requiring testing and treatment for venereal disease, and in spite of the World Health Organization's Declaration of Helsinki (1964), which specified that "informed consent" was needed for experiment involving human beings.Blowing the WhistleThe story finally broke in the Washington Star on July 25, 1972, in an article by Jean Heller of the Associated Press. Her source was Peter Buxtun, a former PHS venereal disease interviewer and one of the few whistle blowers over the years. The PHS, however, remained unrepentant, claiming the men had been "volunteers" and "were always happy to see the doctors," and an Alabama state health officer who had been involved claimed "somebody is trying to make a mountain out of a molehill."Under the glare of publicity, the government ended their experiment, and for the first time provided the men with effective medical treatment for syphilis. Fred Gray, a lawyer who had previously defended Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, filed a class action suit that provided a $10 million out-of-court settlement for the men and their families. Gray, however, named only whites and white organizations in the suit, portraying Tuskegee as a black and white case when it was in fact more complex than that-black doctors and institutions had been involved from beginning to end. The PHS did not accept the media's comparison of Tuskegee with the appalling experiments performed by Nazi doctors on their Jewish victims during World War II. Yet in addition to the medical and racist parallels, the PHS offered the same morally bankrupt defense offered at the Nuremberg trials: they claimed they were just carrying out orders, mere cogs in the wheel of the PHS bureaucracy, exempt from personal responsibility.The study's other justification-for the greater good of science-is equally spurious. Scientific protocol had been shoddy from the start. Since the men had in fact received some medication for syphilis in the beginning of the study, however inadequate, it thereby corrupted the outcome of a study of "untreated syphilis."In 1990, a survey found that 10 percent of African Americans believed that the U.S. government created AIDS as a plot to exterminate blacks, and another 20 percent could not rule out the possibility that this might be true. As preposterous and paranoid as this may sound, at one time the Tuskegee experiment must have seemed equally farfetched. Who could imagine the government, all the way up to the Surgeon General of the United States, deliberately allowing a group of its citizens to die from a terrible disease for the sake of an ill-conceived experiment? In light of this and many other shameful episodes in our history, African Americans' widespread mistrust of the government and white society in general should not be a surprise to anyone. -BB
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I believe one of the reasons that AIDS is more prevalent among blacks is because in many areas of the black community, being gay is not tolerated so gay and bisexual men marry women and have gay sex on the down low . Some even say they are heterosexual and just like to have male on male sex because they can't even admit this to themselves. I suspect that if they are in that much denial, they aren't as careful using protection and passing it along to their partners. Anal sex whether m/m, m/f or f/f is more likely to pass the HIV virus.
Another factor I believe is that poor people, whether black or white are less likely to get preventative medicine, such as mammograms and condoms, though not 100% effective, are the best way to prevent the virus. If people don't have insurance and aren't seeing doctors regularly, or are being seen at a clinic and don't have a regular doctor, they don't have the rapport and may not be getting STD prevention information and supplies.
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That's what I was saying all the time, the black community needs to change its way of life. I am sure when they compare middle class whites to middle class blacks, there will be few differences in health, because the latter integrate into middle calss society and adopt a healthier life style , etc. When a poor peron eats mostly junk food what do you expect it's doing to his heart ?
I think this comes across a racially intolerant. I doubt there is much of a difference between what poor blacks eat vs. poor whites and just about anything you can say about blacks is the same for whites.
Blacks and whites have biological differences that have nothing to do with diet. Clinical trials are usually done on white men and that's why they're only now finding that women have different symptoms than men when it comes to heart disease. Breast cancer is generally more aggressive in African-American women vs. caucasian women diagnosed at the same stage of cancer. They are not doing research to see whether different chemo protocols might be more beneficial to black women vs. white. I participated in a clinical trial comparing the genetic make up of caucasians vs. african american women through the University of Pennsylvania to try to determine some of the differences.
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I am not knowledgeable on this subject only to add-- having worked for the past 18 years in an inner city medical practice I can tell you that quite a few of our HIV patients were also IV drug users.
For an 80 +year old to incidentally find out she has contracted HIV when she is many years a widow is just too sad for whatever reason.
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One of the most egregious aspects of Tuskegee was that these men infected their wives and children and the doctors performing the experiment knew this would happen. And since at the beginning of the experiment, the known cures were gruelling, expensive, and often didn't work, and since they didn't tell these men what disease they had, it was likely that their wives and children would endure a life time of suffering. Not enough of Tuskegee is known in this country to white Americans. I can imagine that most African Americans do know of Tuskegee, and it's hardly surprising that some African Americans would believe AIDS is a genocidally designed epidemic. I've often wondered how African Americans can be so forgiving of white society. They must have a greater forgiiveness gene than I have.
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Amy, I completely agree with you that the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment is a big factor in why 30% of African Americans in 1990 thought it at least possible that AIDS was deliberately spread among their community.
BUT -- there are two errors in your statement that "the government did inject the Tuskegee airmen with syphillis from 1932-1972."
1) The Tuskegee Airmen had nothing to do with the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. The Tuskegee Airmen were college-educated men hand-selected for combat aviation training in WWII.
2) In the 40-year syphilis study conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service in Tuskegee, Alabama -- the men studied (many of whom were illiterate, all of whom were poor) were NOT "injected with syphilis." However, even though these men were not deliberated infected, you are correct that the study was heinous: they were never given any treatment even when treatments were available! They were not informed of the disease they had or how it was spread, or how to protect their families. Thus, 40 wives became infected and 19 children born with congenital syphilis -- all of which could have been prevented if this study, funded by the U.S. government, had actually been intended to promote the health of that community.
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Speaking of junk food. In the United States, eating junk food is not confined to poor people; the entire country is moving towards obesity. This is also happening in other countries. Italian children are getting fatter every year, mainly because a good bit of the American life style has arrived in italy, including MacDonald's. And the old habits of walking everywhere are dying off. In the hill towns that we lived in, it was wonderful to see the life styles of older Italians who walked everywhere. I often had women who appeared to be in their late 70's and 80's pass me by walking up hills and disappear long before I got to the top. When we lived in Assisi and I became more Italian, I lost 40 pounds, all of it back since I returned to New York, alas.
And in Maine where we spend our summers, almost every woman I see is overweight, from those in their teens to senior citizens--men too. I saw a few Latinos in Maine last year, but not a single African American.
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So we don't get the idea that only African Americans have been targeted by our government, here is information about what was done to women in Puerto Rico:
Contraception was legalized in Puerto Rico in 1937, the same year the Puerto Rican government passed Law 116 allowing sterilization to be conducted under the direction of a eugenics board. Shortly thereafter, a program to sterilize women, supported and endorsed by the US government and Clarence Gamble, heir of Procter and Gamble, was launched through door-to-door visits in rural regions by workers from Puerto Rico's health department heralding the operation to the island poorest women. Post-partum sterilizations were conducted almost routinely by 1946 in a number of hospitals. A 1947 Princeton University survey, however, found that more than 25% of women who had been sterilized regretted their decision. Puerto Rican nationalists and Catholics argued against the program in the early 1950s and Law 116 was ultimately repealed in 1960, but not before 35% of women of childbearing age had been sterilized in Puerto Rico.
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AnnNYC, thanks for your corrections. We had a tuskegee airman volunteering at the Obama office the other day so i had him on my mind when I was typing this.
I did think that the gov't injected those in Tuskegee-- am I confusing them with the MR population. I know we did a lot of "experiements".
I googled some of the other nonconsentual medical "research" our lovely goverment has done over the past 150 years.
Introduction by the Health Ranger: The United States claims to be the world leader in medicine. But there's a dark side to western medicine that few want to acknowledge: The horrifying medical experiments performed on impoverished people and their children all in the name of scientific progress. Many of these medical experiments were conducted on people without their knowledge, and most were conducted as part of an effort to seek profits from newly approved drugs or medical technologies.
Today, the medical experiments continue on the U.S. population and its children. From the mass drugging of children diagnosed with fictitious behavioral disorders invented by psychiatry to the FDA's approval of mass-marketed drugs that have undergone no legitimate clinical trials, our population is right now being subjected to medical experiments on a staggering scale. Today, nearly 50% of Americans are on a least one prescription drug, and nearly 20% of schoolchildren are on mind-altering amphetamines like Ritalin or antidepressants like Prozac. This mass medication of our nation is, in every way, a grand medical experiment taking place right now.But to truly understand how this mass experimentation on modern Americans came into being, you have to take a close look at the horrifying history of conventional medicine's exploitation of people for cruel medical experiments.
WARNING: What you are about to read is truly shocking. You have never been told this information by the American Medical Association, nor drug companies, nor the evening news. You were never taught the truth about conventional medicine in public school, or even at any university. This is the dark secret of the U.S. system of medicine, and once you read the true accounts reported here, you may never trust drug companies again. These images are deeply disturbing. We print them here not as a form of entertainment, but as a stern warning against what might happen to us and our children if we do not rein in the horrifying, inhumane actions of Big Pharma and modern-day psychiatry.
Now, I introduce this shocking timeline, researched and authored by Dani Veracity, one of our many talented staff writers here at Truth Publishing.
Read at your own risk. - The Health Ranger
The true U.S. history of human medical experimentation
Human experimentation -- that is, subjecting live human beings to science experiments that are sometimes cruel, sometimes painful, sometimes deadly and always a risk -- is a major part of U.S. history that you won't find in most history or science books. The United States is undoubtedly responsible for some of the most amazing scientific breakthroughs. These advancements, especially in the field of medicine, have changed the lives of billions of people around the world -- sometimes for the better, as in the case of finding a cure for malaria and other epidemic diseases, and sometimes for the worse (consider modern "psychiatry" and the drugging of schoolchildren).
However, these breakthroughs come with a hefty price tag: The human beings used in the experiments that made these advancements possible. Over the last two centuries, some of these test subjects have been compensated for the damage done to their emotional and physical health, but most have not. Many have lost their lives because of the experiments they often unwillingly and sometimes even unwittingly participated in, and they of course can never be compensated for losing their most precious possession of all: Their health.As you read through these science experiments, you'll learn the stories of newborns injected with radioactive substances, mentally ill people placed in giant refrigerators, military personnel exposed to chemical weapons by the very government they served and mentally challenged children being purposely infected with hepatitis. These stories are facts, not fiction: Each account, no matter how horrifying, is backed up with a link or citation to a reputable source.
These stories must be heard because human experimentation is still going on today. The reasons behind the experiments may be different, but the usual human guinea pigs are still the same -- members of minority groups, the poor and the disadvantaged. These are the lives that were put on the line in the name of "scientific" medicine.
(1833)
Dr. William Beaumont, an army surgeon physician, pioneers gastric medicine with his study of a patient with a permanently open gunshot wound to the abdomen and writes a human medical experimentation code that asserts the importance of experimental treatments, but also lists requirements stipulating that human subjects must give voluntary, informed consent and be able to end the experiment when they want. Beaumont's Code lists verbal, rather than just written, consent as permissible (Berdon).
(1845)(1845 - 1849) J. Marion Sims, later hailed as the "father of gynecology," performs medical experiments on enslaved African women without anesthesia. These women would usually die of infection soon after surgery. Based on his belief that the movement of newborns' skull bones during protracted births causes trismus, he also uses a shoemaker's awl, a pointed tool shoemakers use to make holes in leather, to practice moving the skull bones of babies born to enslaved mothers (Brinker).
(1895)New York pediatrician Henry Heiman infects a 4-year-old boy whom he calls "an idiot with chronic epilepsy" with gonorrhea as part of a medical experiment ("Human Experimentation: Before the Nazi Era and After").
(1896)Dr. Arthur Wentworth turns 29 children at Boston's Children's Hospital into human guinea pigs when he performs spinal taps on them, just to test whether the procedure is harmful (Sharav).
(1900)U.S Army doctors working in the Philippines infect five Filipino prisoners with plague and withhold proper nutrition to create Beriberi in 29 prisoners; four test subjects die (Merritte, et al.; Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).
Under commission from the U.S. surgeon general, Dr. Walter Reed goes to Cuba and uses 22 Spanish immigrant workers to prove that yellow fever is contracted through mosquito bites. Doing so, he introduces the practice of using healthy test subjects, and also the concept of a written contract to confirm informed consent of these subjects. While doing this study, Dr. Reed clearly tells the subjects that, though he will do everything he can to help them, they may die as a result of the experiment. He pays them $100 in gold for their participation, plus $100 extra if they contract yellow fever (Berdon, Sharav).(1906)
Harvard professor Dr. Richard Strong infects prisoners in the Philippines with cholera to study the disease; 13 of them die. He compensates survivors with cigars and cigarettes. During the Nuremberg Trials, Nazi doctors cite this study to justify their own medical experiments (Greger, Sharav).
(1911)Dr. Hideyo Noguchi of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research publishes data on injecting an inactive syphilis preparation into the skin of 146 hospital patients and normal children in an attempt to develop a skin test for syphilis. Later, in 1913, several of these children's parents sue Dr. Noguchi for allegedly infecting their children with syphilis ("Reviews and Notes: History of Medicine: Subjected to Science: Human Experimentation in America before the Second World War").
(1913)Medical experimenters "test" 15 children at the children's home St. Vincent's House in Philadelphia with tuberculin, resulting in permanent blindness in some of the children. Though the Pennsylvania House of Representatives records the incident, the researchers are not punished for the experiments ("Human Experimentation: Before the Nazi Era and After").
(1915)Dr. Joseph Goldberger, under order of the U.S. Public Health Office, produces Pellagra, a debilitating disease that affects the central nervous system, in 12 Mississippi inmates to try to find a cure for the disease. One test subject later says that he had been through "a thousand hells." In 1935, after millions die from the disease, the director of the U.S Public Health Office would finally admit that officials had known that it was caused by a niacin deficiency for some time, but did nothing about it because it mostly affected poor African-Americans. During the Nuremberg Trials, Nazi doctors used this study to try to justify their medical experiments on concentration camp inmates (Greger; Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).
(1918)In response to the Germans' use of chemical weapons during World War I, President Wilson creates the Chemical Warfare Service (CWS) as a branch of the U.S. Army. Twenty-four years later, in 1942, the CWS would begin performing mustard gas and lewisite experiments on over 4,000 members of the armed forces (Global Security, Goliszek).
(1919)(1919 - 1922) Researchers perform testicular transplant experiments on inmates at San Quentin State Prison in California, inserting the testicles of recently executed inmates and goats into the abdomens and scrotums of living prisoners (Greger).
(1931)Cornelius Rhoads, a pathologist from the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, purposely infects human test subjects in Puerto Rico with cancer cells; 13 of them die. Though a Puerto Rican doctor later discovers that Rhoads purposely covered up some of details of his experiment and Rhoads himself gives a written testimony stating he believes that all Puerto Ricans should be killed, he later goes on to establish the U.S. Army Biological Warfare facilities in Maryland, Utah and Panama, and is named to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, where he begins a series of radiation exposure experiments on American soldiers and civilian hospital patients (Sharav; Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).
(1931 - 1933) Mental patients at Elgin State Hospital in Illinois are injected with radium-266 as an experimental therapy for mental illness (Goliszek).(1932)
(1932-1972) The U.S. Public Health Service in Tuskegee, Ala. diagnoses 400 poor, black sharecroppers with syphilis but never tells them of their illness nor treats them; instead researchers use the men as human guinea pigs to follow the symptoms and progression of the disease. They all eventually die from syphilis and their families are never told that they could have been treated (Goliszek, University of Virginia Health System Health Sciences Library).
(1937)Scientists at Cornell University Medical School publish an angina drug study that uses both placebo and blind assessment techniques on human test subjects. They discover that the subjects given the placebo experienced more of an improvement in symptoms than those who were given the actual drug. This is first account of the placebo effect published in the United States ("Placebo Effect").
(1939)In order to test his theory on the roots of stuttering, prominent speech pathologist Dr. Wendell Johnson performs his famous "Monster Experiment" on 22 children at the Iowa Soldiers' Orphans' Home in Davenport. Dr. Johnson and his graduate students put the children under intense psychological pressure, causing them to switch from speaking normally to stuttering heavily. At the time, some of the students reportedly warn Dr. Johnson that, "in the aftermath of World War II, observers might draw comparisons to Nazi experiments on human subjects, which could destroy his career" (Alliance for Human Research Protection).
(1941)Dr. William C. Black infects a 12-month-old baby with herpes as part of a medical experiment. At the time, the editor of the Journal of Experimental Medicine, Francis Payton Rous, calls it "an abuse of power, an infringement of the rights of an individual, and not excusable because the illness which followed had implications for science" (Sharav).
An article in a 1941 issue of Archives of Pediatrics describes medical studies of the severe gum disease Vincent's angina in which doctors transmit the disease from sick children to healthy children with oral swabs (Goliszek).Drs. Francis and Salk and other researchers at the University of Michigan spray large amounts of wild influenza virus directly into the nasal passages of "volunteers" from mental institutions in Michigan. The test subjects develop influenza within a very short period of time (Meiklejohn).
Researchers give 800 poverty-stricken pregnant women at a Vanderbilt University prenatal clinic "cocktails" including radioactive iron in order to determine the iron requirements of pregnant women (Pacchioli).
(1942)
The United States creates Fort Detrick, a 92-acre facility, employing nearly 500 scientists working to create biological weapons and develop defensive measures against them. Fort Detrick's main objectives include investigating whether diseases are transmitted by inhalation, digestion or through skin absorption; of course, these biological warfare experiments heavily relied on the use of human subjects (Goliszek).
U.S. Army and Navy doctors infect 400 prison inmates in Chicago with malaria to study the disease and hopefully develop a treatment for it. The prisoners are told that they are helping the war effort, but not that they are going to be infected with malaria. During Nuremberg Trials, Nazi doctors later cite this American study to defend their own medical experiments in concentration camps like Auschwitz (Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).The Chemical Warfare Service begins mustard gas and lewisite experiments on 4,000 members of the U.S. military. Some test subjects don't realize they are volunteering for chemical exposure experiments, like 17-year-old Nathan Schnurman, who in 1944 thinks he is only volunteering to test "U.S. Navy summer clothes" (Goliszek).
In an experiment sponsored by the U.S. Navy, Harvard biochemist Edward Cohn injects 64 inmates of Massachusetts state prisons with cow's blood (Sharav).
Merck Pharmaceuticals President George Merck is named director of the War Research Service (WRS), an agency designed to oversee the establishment of a biological warfare program (Goliszek).
(1943)
In order to "study the effect of frigid temperature on mental disorders," researchers at University of Cincinnati Hospital keep 16 mentally disabled patients in refrigerated cabinets for 120 hours at 30 degrees Fahrenheit (Sharav).
(1944)As part of the Manhattan Project that would eventually create the atomic bomb, researchers inject 4.7 micrograms of plutonium into soldiers at the Oak Ridge facility, 20 miles west of Knoxville, Tenn. ("Manhattan Project: Oak Ridge").
Captain A. W. Frisch, an experienced microbiologist, begins experiments on four volunteers from the state prison at Dearborn, Mich., inoculating prisoners with hepatitis-infected specimens obtained in North Africa. One prisoner dies; two others develop hepatitis but live; the fourth develops symptoms but does not actually develop the disease (Meiklejohn).Laboratory workers at the University of Minnesota and University of Chicago inject human test subjects with phosphorus-32 to learn the metabolism of hemoglobin (Goliszek).
(1944 - 1946) In order to quickly develop a cure for malaria -- a disease hindering Allied success in World War II -- University of Chicago Medical School professor Dr. Alf Alving infects psychotic patients at Illinois State Hospital with the disease through blood transfusions and then experiments malaria cures on them (Sharav).
A captain in the medical corps addresses an April 1944 memo to Col. Stanford Warren, head of the Manhattan Project's Medical Section, expressing his concerns about atom bomb component fluoride's central nervous system (CNS) effects and asking for animal research to be done to determine the extent of these effects: "Clinical evidence suggests that uranium hexafluoride may have a rather marked central nervous system effect ... It seems most likely that the F [code for fluoride] component rather than the T [code for uranium] is the causative factor ... Since work with these compounds is essential, it will be necessary to know in advance what mental effects may occur after exposure." The following year, the Manhattan Project would begin human-based studies on fluoride's effects (Griffiths and Bryson).
The Manhattan Project medical team, led by the now infamous University of Rochester radiologist Col. Safford Warren, injects plutonium into patients at the University's teaching hospital, Strong Memorial (Burton Report).
(1945)
Continuing the Manhattan Project, researchers inject plutonium into three patients at the University of Chicago's Billings Hospital (Sharav).
The U.S. State Department, Army intelligence and the CIA begin Operation Paperclip, offering Nazi scientists immunity and secret identities in exchange for work on top-secret government projects on aerodynamics and chemical warfare medicine in the United States ("Project Paperclip").Researchers infect 800 prisoners in Atlanta with malaria to study the disease (Sharav).
(1945 - 1955) In Newburgh, N.Y., researchers linked to the Manhattan Project begin the most extensive American study ever done on the health effects of fluoridating public drinking water (Griffiths and Bryson).
(1946)
Gen. Douglas MacArthur strikes a secret deal with Japanese physician Dr. Shiro Ishii to turn over 10,000 pages of information gathered from human experimentation in exchange for granting Ishii immunity from prosecution for the horrific experiments he performed on Chinese, Russian and American war prisoners, including performing vivisections on live human beings (Goliszek, Sharav).
Male and female test subjects at Chicago's Argonne National Laboratories are given intravenous injections of arsenic-76 so that researchers can study how the human body absorbs, distributes and excretes arsenic (Goliszek).Continuing the Newburg study of 1945, the Manhattan Project commissions the University of Rochester to study fluoride's effects on animals and humans in a project codenamed "Program F." With the help of the New York State Health Department, Program F researchers secretly collect and analyze blood and tissue samples from Newburg residents. The studies are sponsored by the Atomic Energy Commission and take place at the University of Rochester Medical Center's Strong Memorial Hospital (Griffiths and Bryson).
(1946 - 1947) University of Rochester researchers inject four male and two female human test subjects with uranium-234 and uranium-235 in dosages ranging from 6.4 to 70.7 micrograms per one kilogram of body weight in order to study how much uranium they could tolerate before their kidneys become damaged (Goliszek).
Six male employees of a Chicago metallurgical laboratory are given water contaminated with plutonium-239 to drink so that researchers can learn how plutonium is absorbed into the digestive tract (Goliszek).
Researchers begin using patients in VA hospitals as test subjects for human medical experiments, cleverly worded as "investigations" or "observations" in medical study reports to avoid negative connotations and bad publicity (Sharav).
The American public finally learns of the biowarfare experiments being done at Fort Detrick from a report released by the War Department (Goliszek).
(1946 - 1953) The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission sponsors studies in which researchers from Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital and the Boston University School of Medicine feed mentally disabled students at Fernald State School Quaker Oats breakfast cereal spiked with radioactive tracers every morning so that nutritionists can study how preservatives move through the human body and if they block the absorption of vitamins and minerals. Later, MIT researchers conduct the same study at Wrentham State School (Sharav, Goliszek).
Human test subjects are given one to four injections of arsenic-76 at the University of Chicago Department of Medicine. Researchers take tissue biopsies from the subjects before and after the injections (Goliszek).
(1947)
Col. E.E. Kirkpatrick of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) issues a top-secret document (707075) dated Jan. 8. In it, he writes that "certain radioactive substances are being prepared for intravenous administration to human subjects as a part of the work of the contract" (Goliszek).
A secret AEC document dated April 17 reads, "It is desired that no document be released which refers to experiments with humans that might have an adverse reaction on public opinion or result in legal suits," revealing that the U.S. government was aware of the health risks its nuclear tests posed to military personnel conducting the tests or nearby civilians (Goliszek).The CIA begins studying LSD's potential as a weapon by using military and civilian test subjects for experiments without their consent or even knowledge. Eventually, these LSD studies will evolve into the MKULTRA program in 1953 (Sharav).
(1947 - 1953) The U.S. Navy begins Project Chatter to identify and test so-called "truth serums," such as those used by the Soviet Union to interrogate spies. Mescaline and the central nervous system depressant scopolamine are among the many drugs tested on human subjects (Goliszek).
(1948)
Based on the secret studies performed on Newburgh, N.Y. residents beginning in 1945, Project F researchers publish a report in the August 1948 edition of the Journal of the American Dental Association, detailing fluoride's health dangers. The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) quickly censors it for "national security" reasons (Griffiths and Bryson).
(1950)(1950 - 1953) The CIA and later the Office of Scientific Intelligence begin Project Bluebird (renamed Project Artichoke in 1951) in order to find ways to "extract" information from CIA agents, control individuals "through special interrogation techniques," "enhance memory" and use "unconventional techniques, including hypnosis and drugs" for offensive measures (Goliszek).
(1950 - 1953) The U.S. Army releases chemical clouds over six American and Canadian cities. Residents in Winnipeg, Canada, where a highly toxic chemical called cadmium is dropped, subsequently experience high rates of respiratory illnesses (Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).In order to determine how susceptible an American city could be to biological attack, the U.S. Navy sprays a cloud of Bacillus globigii bacteria from ships over the San Francisco shoreline. According to monitoring devices situated throughout the city to test the extent of infection, the eight thousand residents of San Francisco inhale five thousand or more bacteria particles, many becoming sick with pneumonia-like symptoms (Goliszek).
Dr. Joseph Strokes of the University of Pennsylvania infects 200 female prisoners with viral hepatitis to study the disease (Sharav).
Doctors at the Cleveland City Hospital study changes in cerebral blood flow by injecting test subjects with spinal anesthesia, inserting needles in their jugular veins and brachial arteries, tilting their heads down and, after massive blood loss causes paralysis and fainting, measuring their blood pressure. They often perform this experiment multiple times on the same subject (Goliszek).
Dr. D. Ewen Cameron, later of MKULTRA infamy due to his 1957 to1964 experiments on Canadians, publishes an article in the British Journal of Physical Medicine, in which he describes experiments that entail forcing schizophrenic patients at Manitoba's Brandon Mental Hospital to lie naked under 15- to 200-watt red lamps for up to eight hours per day. His other experiments include placing mental patients in an electric cage that overheats their internal body temperatures to 103 degrees Fahrenheit, and inducing comas by giving patients large injections of insulin (Goliszek).
(1951)
The U.S. Navy's Project Bluebird is renamed Project Artichoke and begins human medical experiments that test the effectiveness of LSD, sodium pentothal and hypnosis for the interrogative purposes described in Project Bluebird's objectives (1950) (Goliszek).
The U.S. Army secretly contaminates the Norfolk Naval Supply Center in Virginia and Washington, D.C.'s National Airport with a strain of bacteria chosen because African-Americans were believed to be more susceptible to it than Caucasians. The experiment causes food poisoning, respiratory problems and blood poisoning (Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).(1951 - 1952) Researchers withhold insulin from diabetic patients for up to two days in order to observe the effects of diabetes; some test subjects go into diabetic comas (Goliszek).
(1951 - 1956) Under contract with the Air Force's School of Aviation Medicine (SAM), the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston begins studying the effects of radiation on cancer patients -- many of them members of minority groups or indigents, according to sources -- in order to determine both radiation's ability to treat cancer and the possible long-term radiation effects of pilots flying nuclear-powered planes. The study lasts until 1956, involving 263 cancer patients. Beginning in 1953, the subjects are required to sign a waiver form, but it still does not meet the informed consent guidelines established by the Wilson memo released that year. The TBI studies themselves would continue at four different institutions -- Baylor University College of Medicine, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, the U.S. Naval Hospital in Bethesda and the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine -- until 1971 (U.S. Department of Energy, Goliszek).
American, Canadian and British military and intelligence officials gather a small group of eminent psychologists to a secret meeting at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Montreal about Communist "thought-control techniques." They proposed a top-secret research program on behavior modification -- involving testing drugs, hypnosis, electroshock and lobotomies on humans (Barker).
(1952)
Military scientists use the Dugway Proving Ground -- which is located 87 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah -- in a series of experiments to determine how Brucella suis and Brucella melitensis spread in human populations. Today, over a half-century later, some experts claim that we are all infected with these agents as a result of these experiments (Goliszek).
In a U.S. Department of Denfense-sponsored experiment, Henry Blauer dies after he is injected with mescaline at Columbia University's New York State Psychiatric Institute (Sharav).At the famous Sloan-Kettering Institute, Chester M. Southam injects live cancer cells into prisoners at the Ohio State Prison to study the progression of the disease. Half of the prisoners in this National Institutes of Health-sponsored (NIH) study are black, awakening racial suspicions stemming from Tuskegee, which was also an NIH-sponsored study (Merritte, et al.).
(1953)
(1953 - 1970) The CIA begins project MKNAOMI to "stockpile incapacitating and lethal materials, to develop gadgetry for the disseminations of these materials, and to test the effects of certain drugs on animals and humans." As part of MKNAOMI, the CIA and the Special Operations Division of the Army Biological Laboratory at Fort Detrick try to develop two suicide pill alternatives to the standard cyanide suicide pill given to CIA agents and U-2 pilots. CIA agents and U-2 pilots are meant to take these pills when they find themselves in situations in which they (and all the information they hold in their brains) are in enemy hands. They also develop a "microbioinoculator" -- a device that agents can use to fire small darts coated with biological agents that can remain potent for weeks or even months. These darts can be fired through clothing and, most significantly, are undetectable during autopsy. Eventually, by the late 1960s, MKNAOMI enables the CIA to have a stockpile of biological toxins -- infectious viruses, paralytic shellfish toxin, lethal botulism toxin, snake venom and the severe skin disease-producing agent Mircosporum gypseum. Of course, the development of all of this "gadgetry" requires human experimentation (Goliszek).
(1953 - 1974) CIA Director Allen Dulles authorizes the MKULTRA program to produce and test drugs and biological agents that the CIA could use for mind control and behavior modification. MKULTRA later becomes well known for its pioneering studies on LSD, which are often performed on prisoners or patrons of brothels set up and run by the CIA. The brothel experiments, known as "Operation Midnight Climax," feature two-way mirrors set up in the brothels so that CIA agents can observe LSD's effects on sexual behavior. Ironically, governmental figures sometimes slip LSD into each other's drinks as part of the program, resulting in the LSD psychosis-induced suicide of Dr. Frank Olson indirectly at the hands of MKULTRA's infamous key player Dr. Sidney Gottlieb. Of all the hundreds of human test subjects used during MKULTRA, only 14 are ever notified of the involvement and only one is ever compensated ($15,000). Most of the MKULTRA files are eventually destroyed in 1973 (Elliston; Merritte, et al.; Barker).The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) sponsors iodine studies at the University of Iowa. In the first study, researchers give pregnant women 100 to 200 microcuries of iodine-131 and then study the women's aborted embryos in order to learn at what stage and to what extent radioactive iodine crosses the placental barrier. In the second study, researchers give 12 male and 13 female newborns under 36 hours old and weighing between 5.5 and 8.5 pounds iodine-131 either orally or via intramuscular injection, later measuring the concentration of iodine in the newborns' thyroid glands (Goliszek).
Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson issues the Wilson memo, a top-secret document establishing the Nuremberg Code as Department of Defense policy on human experimentation. The Wilson memo requires voluntary, written consent from a human medical research subject after he or she has been informed of "the nature, duration, and purpose of the experiment; the method and means by which it is to be conducted; all inconveniences and hazards reasonably to be expected; and effects upon his health or person which may possibly come from his participation in the experiment." It also insists that doctors only use experimental treatments when other methods have failed (Berdon).
As part of an AEC study, researchers feed 28 healthy infants at the University of Nebraska College of Medicine iodine-131 through a gastric tube and then test concentration of iodine in the infants' thyroid glands 24 hours later (Goliszek).
(1953 - 1957) Eleven patients at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston are injected with uranium as part of the Manhattan Project (Sharav).
In an AEC-sponsored study at the University of Tennessee, researchers inject healthy two- to three-day-old newborns with approximately 60 rads of iodine-131 (Goliszek).
Newborn Daniel Burton becomes blind when physicians at Brooklyn Doctors Hospital perform an experimental high oxygen treatment for Retrolental Fibroplasia, a retinal disorder affecting premature infants, on him and other premature babies. The physicians perform the experimental treatment despite earlier studies showing that high oxygen levels cause blindness. Testimony in Burton v. Brooklyn Doctors Hospital (452 N.Y.S.2d875) later reveals that researchers continued to give Burton and other infants excess oxygen even after their eyes had swelled to dangerous levels (Goliszek, Sharav).
The CIA begins Project MKDELTA to study the use of biochemicals "for harassment, discrediting and disabling purposes" (Goliszek).
A 1953 article in Clinical Science describes a medical experiment in which researchers purposely blister the abdomens of 41 children, ranging in age from eight to 14, with cantharide in order to study how severely the substance irritates the skin (Goliszek).
The AEC performs a series of field tests known as "Green Run," dropping radiodine 131 and xenon 133 over the Hanford, Wash. site -- 500,000 acres encompassing three small towns (Hanford, White Bluffs and Richland) along the Columbia River (Sharav).
In an AEC-sponsored study to learn whether radioactive iodine affects premature babies differently from full-term babies, researchers at Harper Hospital in Detroit give oral doses of iodine-131 to 65 premature and full-term infants weighing between 2.1 and 5.5 pounds (Goliszek).
(1954)
The CIA begins Project QKHILLTOP to study Chinese Communist Party brainwashing techniques and use them to further the CIA's own interrogative methods. Most experts speculate that the Cornell University Medical School Human Ecology Studies Program conducted Project QKHILLTOP's early experiments (Goliszek).
(1954 - 1975) U.S. Air Force medical officers assigned to Fort Detrick's Chemical Corps Biological Laboratory begin Operation Whitecoat -- experiments involving exposing human test subjects to hepatitis A, plague, yellow fever, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, Rift Valley fever, rickettsia and intestinal microbes. These test subjects include 2,300 Seventh Day Adventist military personnel, who choose to become human guinea pigs rather than potentially kill others in combat. Only two of the 2,300 claim long-term medical complications from participating in the study ("Operation Whitecoat".)In a general memo to university researchers under contract with the military, the Surgeon General of the U.S. Army asserts the human experimentation guidelines -- including informed, written consent -- established in the classified Wilson memo (Goliszek).
(1955)
In U.S. Army-sponsored experiments performed at Tulane University, mental patients are given LSD and other drugs and then have electrodes implanted in their brain to measure the levels (Barker, "The Cold War Experiments").
(1955 - 1957) In order to learn how cold weather affects human physiology, researchers give a total of 200 doses of iodine-131, a radioactive tracer that concentrates almost immediately in the thyroid gland, to 85 healthy Eskimos and 17 Athapascan Indians living in Alaska. They study the tracer within the body by blood, thyroid tissue, urine and saliva samples from the test subjects. Due to the language barrier, no one tells the test subjects what is being done to them, so there is no informed consent (Goliszek).(1955 - 1965) As a result of their work with the CIA's mind control experiments in Project QKHILLTOP, Cornell neurologists Harold Wolff and Lawrence Hinkle begin the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology (later renamed the Human Ecology Fund) to study "man's relation to his social environment as perceived by him" (Goliszek).
(1956)
(1956 - 1957) U.S. Army covert biological weapons researchers release mosquitoes infected with yellow fever and dengue fever over Savannah, Ga., and Avon Park, Fla., to test the insects' ability to carry disease. After each test, Army agents pose as public health officials to test victims for effects and take pictures of the unwitting test subjects. These experiments result in a high incidence of fevers, respiratory distress, stillbirths, encephalitis and typhoid among the two cities' residents, as well as several deaths (Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).
(1957)The U.S. military conducts Operation Plumbbob at the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Operation Pumbbob consists of 29 nuclear detonations, eventually creating radiation expected to result in a total 32,000 cases of thyroid cancer among civilians in the area. Around 18,000 members of the U.S. military participate in Operation Pumbbob's Desert Rock VII and VIII, which are designed to see how the average foot soldier physiologically and mentally responds to a nuclear battlefield ("Operation Plumbbob", Goliszek).
(1957 - 1964) As part of MKULTRA, the CIA pays McGill University Department of Psychiatry founder Dr. D. Ewen Cameron $69,000 to perform LSD studies and potentially lethal experiments on Canadians being treated for minor disorders like post-partum depression and anxiety at the Allan Memorial Institute, which houses the Psychiatry Department of the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal. The CIA encourages Dr. Cameron to fully explore his "psychic driving" concept of correcting madness through completely erasing one's memory and rewriting the psyche. These "driving" experiments involve putting human test subjects into drug-, electroshock- and sensory deprivation-induced vegetative states for up to three months, and then playing tape loops of noise or simple repetitive statements for weeks or months in order to "rewrite" the "erased" psyche. Dr. Cameron also gives human test subjects paralytic drugs and electroconvulsive therapy 30 to 40 times, as part of his experiments. Most of Dr. Cameron's test subjects suffer permanent damage as a result of his work (Goliszek, "Donald Ewan Cameron").In order to study how blood flows through children's brains, researchers at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia perform the following experiment on healthy children, ranging in age from three to 11: They insert needles into each child's femoral artery (thigh) and jugular vein (neck), bringing the blood down from the brain. Then, they force each child to inhale a special gas through a facemask. In their subsequent Journal of Clinical Investigation article on this study, the researchers note that, in order to perform the experiment, they had to restrain some of the child test subjects by bandaging them to boards (Goliszek).
(1958)
Approximately 300 members of the U.S. Navy are exposed to radiation when the Navy destroyer Mansfield detonates 30 nuclear bombs off the coasts of Pacific Islands during Operation Hardtack (Goliszek).
The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) drops radioactive materials over Point Hope, Alaska, home to the Inupiats, in a field test known under the codename "Project Chariot" (Sharav).(1961)
In response to the Nuremberg Trials, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram begins his famous Obedience to Authority Study in order to answer his question "Could it be that (Adolf) Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?" Male test subjects, ranging in age from 20 to 40 and coming from all education backgrounds, are told to give "learners" electric shocks for every wrong answer the learners give in response to word pair questions. In reality, the learners are actors and are not receiving electric shocks, but what matters is that the test subjects do not know that. Astoundingly, they keep on following orders and continue to administer increasingly high levels of "shocks," even after the actor learners show obvious physical pain ("Milgram Experiment").
(1962)Researchers at the Laurel Children's Center in Maryland test experimental acne antibiotics on children and continue their tests even after half of the young test subjects develop severe liver damage because of the experimental medication (Goliszek). The U.S. Army's Deseret Test Center begins Project 112. This includes SHAD (Shipboard Hazard and Defense), which exposes U.S. Navy and Army personnel to live toxins and chemical poisons in order to determine naval ships' vulnerability to chemical and biological weapons. Military personnel are not test subjects; conducting the tests exposes them. Many of these participants complain of negative health effects at the time and, decades later, suffer from severe medical problems as a result of their exposure (Goliszek, Veterans Health Administration).
The FDA begins requiring that a new pharmaceutical undergo three human clinical trials before it will approve it. From 1962 to 1980, pharmaceutical companies satisfy this requirement by running Phase I trials, which determine a drug's toxicity, on prison inmates, giving them small amounts of cash for compensation (Sharav).(1963)
Chester M. Southam, who injected Ohio State Prison inmates with live cancer cells in 1952, performs the same procedure on 22 senile, African-American female patients at the Brooklyn Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital in order to watch their immunological response. Southam tells the patients that they are receiving "some cells," but leaves out the fact that they are cancer cells. He claims he doesn't obtain informed consent from the patients because he does not want to frighten them by telling them what he is doing, but he nevertheless temporarily loses his medical license because of it. Ironically, he eventually becomes president of the American Cancer Society (Greger, Merritte, et al.).
Researchers at the University of Washington directly irradiate the testes of 232 prison inmates in order to determine radiation's effects on testicular function. When these inmates later leave prison and have children, at least four have babies born with birth defects. The exact number is unknown because researchers never follow up on the men to see the long-term effects of their experiment (Goliszek).In a National Institutes of Health-sponsored (NIH) study, a researcher transplants a chimpanzee's kidney into a human. The experiment fails (Sharav).
(1963 - 1966) New York University researcher Saul Krugman promises parents with mentally disabled children definite enrollment into the Willowbrook State School in Staten Island, N.Y., a resident mental institution for mentally retarded children, in exchange for their signatures on a consent form for procedures presented as "vaccinations." In reality, the procedures involve deliberately infecting children with viral hepatitis by feeding them an extract made from the feces of infected patients, so that Krugman can study the course of viral hepatitis as well the effectiveness of a hepatitis vaccine (Hammer Breslow).
(1963 - 1971) Leading endocrinologist Dr. Carl Heller gives 67 prison inmates at Oregon State Prison in Salem $5 per month and $25 per testicular tissue biopsy in compensation for allowing him to perform irradiation experiments on their testes. If they receive vasectomies at the end of the study, the prisoners are given an extra $100 (Sharav, Goliszek).
Researchers inject a genetic compound called radioactive thymidine into the testicles of more than 100 Oregon State Penitentiary inmates to learn whether sperm production is affected by exposure to steroid hormones (Greger).
In a study published in Pediatrics, researchers at the University of California's Department of Pediatrics use 113 newborns ranging in age from one hour to three days old in a series of experiments used to study changes in blood pressure and blood flow. In one study, doctors insert a catheter through the newborns' umbilical arteries and into their aortas and then immerse the newborns' feet in ice water while recording aortic pressure. In another experiment, doctors strap 50 newborns to a circumcision board, tilt the table so that all the blood rushes to their heads and then measure their blood pressure (Goliszek).
(1964)
(1964 - 1968) The U.S. Army pays $386,486 (the largest sum ever paid for human experimentation) to University of Pennsylvania Professors Albert Kligman and Herbert W. Copelan to run medical experiments on 320 inmates of Holmesburg Prison to determine the effectiveness of seven mind-altering drugs. The researchers' objective is to determine the minimum effective dose of each drug needed to disable 50 percent of any given population (MED-50). Though Professors Kligman and Copelan claim that they are unaware of any long-term effects the mind-altering agents might have on prisoners, documents revealed later would prove otherwise (Kaye).
(1964 - 1967) The Dow Chemical Company pays Professor Kligman $10,000 to learn how dioxin -- a highly toxic, carcinogenic component of Agent Orange -- and other herbicides affect human skin because workers at the chemical plant have been developing an acne-like condition called Chloracne and the company would like to know whether the chemicals they are handling are to blame. As part of the study, Professor Kligman applies roughly the amount of dioxin Dow employees are exposed to on the skin 60 prisoners, and is disappointed when the prisoners show no symptoms of Chloracne. In 1980 and 1981, the human guinea pigs used in this study would begin suing Professor Kligman for complications including lupus and psychological damage (Kaye).(1965)
The Department of Defense uses human test subjects wearing rubber clothing and M9A1 masks to conduct 35 trials near Fort Greely, Ala., as part of the Elk Hunt tests, which are designed to measure the amount of VX nerve agent put on the clothing of people moving through VX-contaminated areas or touching contaminated vehicles, and the amount of VX vapor rising from these areas. After the tests, the subjects are decontaminated using wet steam and high-pressure cold water (Goliszek).
As part of a test codenamed "Big Tom," the Department of Defense sprays Oahu, Hawaii's most heavily populated island, with Bacillus globigii in order to simulate an attack on an island complex. Bacillus globigii causes infections in people with weakened immune systems, but this was not known to scientists at the time (Goliszek, Martin).
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This is part two of a two-part series on human medical experimentation. Click here to read part one and the introduction.
(1966)The CIA continues a limited number of MKULTRA plans by beginning Project MKSEARCH to develop and test ways of using biological, chemical and radioactive materials in intelligence operations, and also to develop and test drugs that are able to produce predictable changes in human behavior and physiology (Goliszek).
Dr. Henry Beecher writes, "The well-being, the health, even the actual or potential life of all human beings, born or unborn, depend upon the continuing experimentation in man. Proceed it must; proceed it will. 'The proper study of mankind is man,'" in his "exposé" on human medical experimentation Research and the Individual ("Human Experimentation: Before the Nazi Era and After").U.S. Army scientists drop light bulbs filled with Bacillus subtilis through ventilation gates and into the New York City subway system, exposing more than one million civilians to the bacteria (Goliszek).
The National Commission for the Protection of Research Subjects issues its Policies for the Protection of Human Subjects, which eventually creates what we now know as institutional review boards (IRBs) (Sharav).
(1967)
Continuing on his Dow Chemical Company-sponsored dioxin study without the company's knowledge or consent, University of Pennsylvania Professor Albert Kligman increases the dosage of dioxin he applies to 10 prisoners' skin to 7,500 micrograms, 468 times the dosage Dow official Gerald K. Rowe had authorized him to administer. As a result, the prisoners experience acne lesions that develop into inflammatory pustules and papules (Kaye).
The CIA places a chemical in the drinking water supply of the FDA headquarters in Washington, D.C. to see whether it is possible to spike drinking water with LSD and other substances (Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).In a study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, researchers inject pregnant women with radioactive cortisol to see if the radioactive material will cross the placentas and affect the fetuses (Goliszek).
The U.S. Army pays Professor Kligman to apply skin-blistering chemicals to Holmesburg Prison inmates' faces and backs, so as to, in Professor Kligman's words, "learn how the skin protects itself against chronic assault from toxic chemicals, the so-called hardening process," information which would have both offensive and defensive applications for the U.S. military (Kaye).
The CIA and Edgewood Arsenal Research Laboratories begin an extensive program for developing drugs that can influence human behavior. This program includes Project OFTEN -- which studies the toxicology, transmission and behavioral effects of drugs in animal and human subjects -- and Project CHICKWIT, which gathers European and Asian drug development information (Goliszek).
Professor Kligman develops Retin-A as an acne cream (and eventually a wrinkle cream), turning him into a multi-millionaire (Kaye).
Researchers paralyze 64 prison inmates in California with a neuromuscular compound called succinylcholine, which produces suppressed breathing that feels similar to drowning. When five prisoners refuse to participate in the medical experiment, the prison's special treatment board gives researchers permission to inject the prisoners with the drug against their will (Greger).
(1968)
Planned Parenthood of San Antonio and South Central Texas and the Southwest Foundation for Research and Education begin an oral contraceptive study on 70 poverty-stricken Mexican-American women, giving only half the oral contraceptives they think they are receiving and the other half a placebo. When the results of this study are released a few years later, it stirs tremendous controversy among Mexican-Americans (Sharav, Sauter).
(1969)President Nixon ends the United States' offensive biowarfare program, including human experimentation done at Fort Detrick. By this time, tens of thousands of civilians and members of the U.S. armed forces have wittingly and unwittingly acted as participants in experiments involving exposure to dangerous biological agents (Goliszek).
The U.S. military conducts DTC Test 69-12, which is an open-air test of VX and sarin nerve agents at the Army's Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland, likely exposing military personnel (Goliszek, Martin).Experimental drugs are tested on mentally disabled children in Milledgeville, Ga., without any institutional approval whatsoever (Sharav).
Dr. Donald MacArthur, the U.S. Department of Defense's Deputy Director for Research and Technology, requests $10 million from Congress to develop a synthetic biological agent that would be resistant "to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease" (Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).
Judge Sam Steinfield's dissent in Strunk v. Strunk, 445 S.W.2d 145 marks the first time a judge has ever suggested that the Nuremberg Code be applied in American court cases (Sharav).
(1970)
A year after his request, under H.R. 15090, Dr. MacArthur receives funding to begin CIA-supervised mycoplasma research with Fort Detrick's Special Operations Division and hopefully create a synthetic immunosuppressive agent. Some experts believe that this research may have inadvertently created HIV, the virus that causes AIDS (Goliszek).
Under order from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which also sponsored the Tuskegee Experiment, the free childcare program at Johns Hopkins University collects blood samples from 7,000 African-American youth, telling their parents that they are checking for anemia but actually checking for an extra Y chromosome (XYY), believed to be a biological predisposition to crime. The program director, Digamber Borganokar, does this experiment without Johns Hopkins University's permission (Greger, Merritte, et al.).(1971)
President Nixon converts Fort Detrick from an offensive biowarfare lab to the Frederick Cancer Research and Development Center, now known as the National Cancer Institute at Frederick. In addition to cancer research, scientists study virology, immunology and retrovirology (including HIV) there. Additionally, the site is home to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute, which researches drugs, vaccines and countermeasures for biological warfare, so the former Fort Detrick does not move far away from its biowarfare past (Goliszek).
Stanford University conducts the Stanford Prison Experiment on a group of college students in order to learn the psychology of prison life. Some students are given the role as prison guards, while the others are given the role of prisoners. After only six days, the proposed two-week study has to end because of its psychological effects on the participants. The "guards" had begun to act sadistic, while the "prisoners" started to show signs of depression and severe psychological stress (University of New Hampshire).An article entitled "Viral Infections in Man Associated with Acquired Immunological Deficiency States" appears in Federation Proceedings. Dr. MacArthur and Fort Detrick's Special Operations Division have, at this point, been conducting mycoplasma research to create a synthetic immunosuppressive agent for about one year, again suggesting that this research may have produced HIV (Goliszek).
(1972)
In studies sponsored by the U.S. Air Force, Dr. Amedeo Marrazzi gives LSD to mental patients at the University of Missouri Institute of Psychiatry and the University of Minnesota Hospital to study "ego strength" (Barker).
(1973)An Ad Hoc Advisory Panel issues its Final Report on the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, writing, "Society can no longer afford to leave the balancing of individual rights against scientific progress to the scientific community" (Sharav).
(1974)Congress enacts the National Research Act, creating the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research and finally setting standards for human experimentation on children (Breslow).
(1975)The Department of Health, Education and Welfare gives the National Institutes of Health's Policies for the Protection of Human Subjects (1966) regulatory status. Title 45, known as "The Common Rule," officially creates institutional review boards (IRBs) (Sharav).
(1977)The Kennedy Hearing initiates the process toward Executive Order 12333, prohibiting intelligence agencies from experimenting on humans without informed consent (Merritte, et al.).
The U.S. government issues an official apology and $400,000 to Jeanne Connell, the sole survivor from Col. Warren's now-infamous plutonium injections at Strong Memorial Hospital, and the families of the other human test subjects (Burton Report).The National Urban League holds its National Conference on Human Experimentation, stating, "We don't want to kill science but we don't want science to kill, mangle and abuse us" (Sharav).
(1978)
The CDC begins experimental hepatitis B vaccine trials in New York. Its ads for research subjects specifically ask for promiscuous homosexual men. Professor Wolf Szmuness of the Columbia University School of Public Health had made the vaccine's infective serum from the pooled blood serum of hepatitis-infected homosexuals and then developed it in chimpanzees, the only animal susceptible to hepatitis B, leading to the theory that HIV originated in chimpanzees before being transferred over to humans via this vaccine. A few months after 1,083 homosexual men receive the vaccine, New York physicians begin noticing cases of Kaposi's sarcoma, Mycoplasma penetrans and a new strain of herpes virus among New York's homosexual community -- diseases not usually seen among young, American men, but that would later be known as common opportunistic diseases associated with AIDS (Goliszek).
(1979)The National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research releases the Belmont Report, which establishes the foundations for research experimentation on humans. The Belmont Report mandates that researchers follow three basic principles: 1. Respect the subjects as autonomous persons and protect those with limited ability for independence (such as children), 2. Do no harm, 3. Choose test subjects justly -- being sure not to target certain groups because of they are easily accessible or easily manipulated, rather than for reasons directly related to the tests (Berdon).
(1980)A study reveals a high incidence of leukemia among the 18,000 military personnel who participated in 1957's Operation Plumbbob (a href=""http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_... Plumbob").
According to blood samples tested years later for HIV, 20 percent of all New York homosexual men who participated in the 1978 hepatitis B vaccine experiment are HIV-positive by this point (Goliszek).American =>http://www.NaturalNews.com/doctors.html>... give experimental hormone shots to hundreds of Haitian men confined to detention camps in Miami and Puerto Rico, causing the men to develop a condition known as gynecomastia, in which men develop full-sized breasts (Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).
The CDC continues its 1978 hepatitis B vaccine experiment in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, St. Louis and Denver, recruiting over 7,000 homosexual men in San Francisco alone (Goliszek).
The FDA prohibits the use of prison inmates in pharmaceutical drug trials, leading to the advent of the experimental drug testing centers industry (Sharav).
The first AIDS case appears in San Francisco (Goliszek).
(1981)
(1981 - 1993) The Seattle-based Genetic Systems Corporation begins an ongoing medical experiment called Protocol No. 126, in which cancer patients at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle are given bone marrow transplants that contain eight experimental proteins made by Genetic Systems, rather than standard bone marrow transplants; 19 human subjects die from complications directly related to the experimental treatment (Goliszek).
A deep diving experiment at Duke University causes test subject Leonard Whitlock to suffer permanent brain damage (Sharav).The CDC acknowledges that a disease known as AIDS exists and confirms 26 cases of the disease -- all in previously healthy homosexuals living in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles -- again supporting the speculation that AIDS originated from the hepatitis B experiments from 1978 and 1980 (Goliszek).
(1982)
Thirty percent of the test subjects used in the CDC's hepatitis B vaccine experiment are HIV-positive by this point (Goliszek).
(1984)SFBC Phase I research clinic founded in Miami, Fla. By 2005, it would become the largest experimental drug testing center in North America with centers in Miami and Montreal, running Phase I to Phase IV clinical trials (Drug Development-Technology.com).
(1985)A former U.S. Army sergeant tries to sue the Army for using drugs on him in without his consent or even his knowledge in United States v. Stanley, 483 U.S. 669. Justice Antonin Scalia writes the decision, clearing the U.S. military from any liability in past, present or future medical experiments without informed consent (Merritte, et al..
(1987)Philadelphia resident Doris Jackson discovers that researchers have removed her son's brain post mortem for medical study. She later learns that the state of Pennsylvania has a doctrine of "implied consent," meaning that unless a patient signs a document stating otherwise, consent for organ removal is automatically implied (Merritte, et al.).
(1988)The U.S. Justice Department pays nine Canadian survivors of the CIA and Dr. Cameron's "psychic driving" experiments (1957 - 1964) $750,000 in out-of-court settlements, to avoid any further investigations into MKULTRA (Goliszek).
(1988 - 2001) The New York City Administration for Children's Services begins allowing foster care children living in about two dozen children's homes to be used in National Institutes of Health-sponsored (NIH) experimental AIDS drug trials. These children -- totaling 465 by the program's end -- experience serious side effects, including inability to walk, diarrhea, vomiting, swollen joints and cramps. Children's home employees are unaware that they are giving the HIV-infected children experimental drugs, rather than standard AIDS treatments (New York City ACS, Doran).(1990)
The United States sends 1.7 million members of the armed forces, 22 percent of whom are African-American, to the Persian Gulf for the Gulf War ("Desert Storm"). More than 400,000 of these soldiers are ordered to take an experimental nerve agent medication called pyridostigmine, which is later believed to be the cause of Gulf War Syndrome -- symptoms ranging from skin disorders, neurological disorders, incontinence, uncontrollable drooling and vision problems -- affecting Gulf War veterans (Goliszek; Merritte, et al.).
The CDC and Kaiser Pharmaceuticals of Southern California inject 1,500 six-month-old black and Hispanic babies in Los Angeles with an "experimental" measles vaccine that had never been licensed for use in the United States. Adding to the risk, children less than a year old may not have an adequate amount of myelin around their nerves, possibly resulting in impaired neural development because of the vaccine. The CDC later admits that parents were never informed that the vaccine being injected into their children was experimental (Goliszek).The FDA allows the U.S. Department of Defense to waive the Nuremberg Code and use unapproved drugs and vaccines in Operation Desert Shield (Sharav).
(1991)
In the May 27 issue of the Los Angeles Times, former U.S. Navy radio operator Richard Jenkins writes that he suffers from leukemia, chronic fatigue and kidney and liver disease as a result of the radiation exposure he received in 1958's Operation Hardtack (Goliszek).
While participating in a UCLA study that withdraws schizophrenics off of their medications, Tony LaMadrid commits suicide (Sharav).(1992)
Columbia University's New York State Psychiatric Institute and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine give 100 males -- mostly African-American and Hispanic, all between the ages of six and 10 and all the younger brothers of juvenile delinquents -- 10 milligrams of fenfluramine (fen-fen) per kilogram of body weight in order to test the theory that low serotonin levels are linked to violent or aggressive behavior. Parents of the
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Stanley Milgram had an office next to mine when I was at the Graduate Center. A small rabbity-looking man with a pleasant demeanor, he reminded me of Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.
I'm quite sure Milgram thought of his experiment on obedience and torture as a reasonable and ethical experiment and one that would advance the study of human psychology. And in some ways it did, just as many of the studies discussed above advanced medicine to the point of saving lives. It all comes down in the end to at what price. In this respect, I am very conflicted. The thought of cloning humans bothers me a great deal, yet I known that cloning may save future lives. My conclusion (which works for me but I don't offer it as a solution for others) is to consider the effect on the subject, and I include animals as well as humans.
In line with the above, I am continually amazed at the way we can rationalize our views. Today, on the McLaughlin Group, JMcL asked if Jesus would have supported the death penalty. Pat Buchanan, supposedly a devoted Catholic, said yes and used as justification what Jesus said to the Good Thief on the cross, arriving finally at the conclusion that if our rewards are ultimately in heaven then life in this world doesn't count for so much. I wonder how he takes that and applies it towards his anti-abortion stance? it was the most specious piece of reasoning I've heard in years, and JMcL, also a Catholic (the Catholic Church condemns the death penalty) was almost spitting in protest.
In conclusion, I think the experiments will continue. Men have a great ability to rationalize evil.
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Here's one of the better pieces I've read on party loyalty and staying with Hillary. Don't let the Obama folks bully you:
The True Definition of "Party Unity"
In response to several clearly spirited comments on my message board of late, here's a little civics lesson for my Obama-supporting Progressive friends: In the United States we have these pesky little things called elections. In these contests for president, which occur every four years, both the Republican and Democratic parties hold primaries and caucuses. At inception, several different candidates typically run. Our citizens then vote for whoever they prefer until one of these candidates in each party wins, and by win we mean they reach the minimum number of delegates (elected by voters to represent them at the conventions) required by each party (not some arbitrary number they come up with when and if they happen not to reach the minimum). Then, the two winners face off in the general election, along with any Independent/third party candidates who've made it onto the ballot. And I know this is once again very annoying, but Americans get to vote for who they prefer once more. So, let's summarize how our great Democracy works: we hold elections, candidates run, Americans get to vote for whomever they prefer, and then we have a new president.
Pretty basic stuff, huh? Yeah, but our Obama-supporting Progressive friends seem to struggle with all this. Seems they agree with only part of it...that only some of us get to choose their preferred candidates. The others, they demand, should like and vote for the Progressives' choice too. But if they don't, and the election gets too close, they then demand that the other candidate drop out so as to make it easier for the Progressives' candidate to win. And what's more, even if their candidate doesn't reach the minimum number of delegates, they say that's ok, let's just give it to Obama anyway since he's ahead. Of course, we all know they'd be arguing this position just as hard if Hillary were ahead but far short of the minimum, right? And when voters don't support Obama, they get attacked for being anti-American, Republican and of dividing the party. C'mon, that's not very Progressive, is it?
And they also get angry when bloggers like me actually write positive things about our preferred candidate, as if it's our job to subjugate our own preferences and write about the other sides' candidate. Yet, the irony is, my February pieces were extremely favorable towards Obama and quite negative towards Hillary, but these Progressives aren't concerned about objectivity. It's not balance they're looking for, but consistent, unconditional love for Obama. It's not ok to merely write negatively about Hillary some of the time, they want it all the time.
If you read some of these comments you'd think I, and anyone else who supports Hillary Clinton, is a subversive, treasonous traitor. See, I look at it quite differently. I'm just exercising my little old right to vote for whoever I please in the primary. Duh. And if my gal doesn't win, like the good Democrat that I am, I will passionately throw all my support (time, blogspace, money, etc) behind Obama and help him fight like an animal to beat John McCain which, call me crazy, seems the rational, logical, sane thing to do...especially since I am against the war, the Bush tax cuts, am pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, anti-guns, and want liberal Supreme Court justices, positions which McCain does not share with me or with Progressives, for that matter. Duh again. Now the Progressives, angry that we won't support their candidate right now or call her dirty or demand she quit even though she's a hair away from Obama, threaten to vote for McCain as punishment if she wins. My way or the highway is their campaign slogan. We fight for liberty, truth, justice and Progressive values for all, they self-righteously brag, but then would freely toss their precious votes to yet another war-mongering, small government, staunch conservative if they don't get their way in the primaries. Wow. Now that makes an awful lot of sense, doesn't it?
So, once again, we free-thinking Democrats say to our Obama-supporting Progressive pals....this is an election. And in these primary elections more than one person gets to run. And voters get to choose who they want, not who you want. And if our candidate wins, the sane thing to do is support her in our collective fight against Republican tyranny. And if Obama wins, we will of course back him with all we've got. Funny, that sounds an awful lot like party unity to me.... -
Wow, Amy -- what a horrific catalog! I had heard of many of these abusive experiments one-by-one -- but reading them all in one long litany is overwhelming. I can see where the details would blur!
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An interesting fact to note about Amy's catalogue of horrific occurences is that they spanned terms of both Democratic and Republican presidents.
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An interesting fact to note about Amy's catalogue of horrific occurences is that they spanned terms of both Democratic and Republican presidents.
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Anneshirley,
No comment. I believe both your posts prove my earlier points.
I am not sure how I proved your point by refusing to pay for people who don't want to work hard for things they need. But I finished my taxes today and had to have a few glasses of wine today to calm down:)
I have a proposition for you and other Liberals. As you pointed out before a lot of Liberals are very successful and well to do people. So why don't they create a fund to which they would VOLUNTARILY contribute a lot of money and then redistribute them to "poor".
I am sure a lot of liberal Hollywood types could stand to donate a million or two.
Because today while they scream about helping others, they also create special loopholes to avoid paying taxes. And these loopholes like special trusts are not avalable to us average folks.
Here is another definition of Liberals for you: people who want spend other people money.
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Rockerfeller foundation
Gates Foundation
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Im Italian American - first generation to this country. I dont like certain parts of our history, but I was not part of it. But I do believe, I have just been stereotyped. Is it only Italians who are getting obese, or is it a universal problem across the world. But then who am I? If Im not obese, somehow my family is involved in the mafia.
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AnnNyc-- isn't it horrific? I studied about a lot of that during grad school-- but seeing it together like that is frightening.
Inna- The list, in my opinion, has nothing to do with partisan politics and that's not why I posted, but it does show that as a country, the government has not only show a blind eye to experimenting on the country's most vulnerable, but has down right sanctioned it. As for talking about liuberals, you are making up your own definition of liberals, not using the true meaning of the words. I am concerned that you are dumping all poor people into one group-- a lazy group who is bleeding your precious tax dollars, sitting around eating junk food and hoping no one tries to make them work. Obama has said that the term "working poor" should be an oxymoron-- because if you work, you shouldn't be poor. There are people working minimum wage jobs trying to support and raise families that may get supplemental help from food stamps to be able to put supper on the table. There are poor people who lost jobs due to their jobs being sent overseas, people who didn't used to be poor before this happened. One thing I can assure you, nobody who is poor enjoys not being able to afford heat in the winter or having to put the heat down so low their kids have to sleep in winter coats or running out of money for food before the end of the month. There are areas of this country that are depressed economically, even in New Orleans people are still living in asbestos filled trailers because insurance didn't pay for losing their homes.
Imagine if Bush reported that Iraq or Iran had done this to it's citizens and we were not aware of our own history of this. People would be up in arms rightly so.
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Amy,
I am not dumping all poor in the same bucket. I SPECIFICALLY mentioned group of people who need our help: elderly, disabled and children There are of course some people like you mentioned that hit a bad patch and that's why we have an unemployment benefits.
Believe me I know about outsourcing jobs since I live in Silicon Valley where this is a common event.
I do know about being poor and not having money, my family had $300 when we come here. My parents spoke very little English and it took them a while to find jobs, etc, etc. We lived in the apartment complex where most of tenants were welfare recipients , it was in 1979 before the welfare reform. Although I got to be honest with you after Russia, it all looked so good. Our friend who came at the same time us upon entering Safeway store and looking at all the food around him fell on the floor and kissed it. He could not believe it all. After where we came from it was like a fairy tale.
But your posting did not address my proposal. There are a lot of rich liberals who are trying to tax ME more and more while they have their accountants to find ways to pay less. to me this is dishonest, so I propose that they put their money where their mouth is and voluntarily give money to poor.
We do have Gates foundation but i don't even know his political affiliation. And as far as I know he stays out of politics and just donates money to worthy causes. Barbara Streisand, Stephen Spielberg just to name a few are not too poor either, have you heard of any sizable donations from them ? Here is a hypocrisy for you.
As far as the minimum jobs go, they should be mostly for students and a stepping stone for most. People can better their lives by trying harder, look at all the immigrants here with no English who start on the bottom and work their way to more comfortable living.
We cannot level playing field for everyone , this is not possible. You have people who have different talents and to take something away from them because they are succeeding is not fair.
Imagine a math class in high school. A teacher gives a test and some students get A and some get C. So the teacher says to those who got an A "Well it was easy for you, because you're good in math. So I will give you B" . And then he turns to C students and says "Well. you did not do too well, but you tried hard, I will give you B". Is that fair ?
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Thanks Marilyn for the names. And there are so many more besides.
What I find of real interest about the Gates Foundation is that Warren Buffet (recently classified as the richest man in America, finally pulling past Bill Gates) rather than starting his own foundation, is giving his money to the Gates Foundation, and actually more money than Bill Gates has contributed. It's a rare human being that not only gives his entire fortune away (he's left his children comfortably off) but who doesn't want his name attached. He's a remarkable person; I wish I could meet him.
Speaking of fairness. Imagine a wealthy country (let's call it Country "A") that gives visas to certain people (let's call them People "A") to leave their own poor country and then pays them a stipend until they get on their feet. Now let's imagine that there are millions, perhaps billions, of people, who would welcome this same opportunity (perhaps worthier people than "A") but they don't get this opportunity. Is this fair?
And continuing with the question of fairness. Let's also imagine that People A, now on their feet, refuse to help People B. People B were actually born in Country A (the country that People A came to through no merit of their own). Indeed, the parents, grandparents, and great grandparents of People B were also born in Country A, helping, in fact, to create the great wealth of Country A through the unpaid-for sweat of their brows. Is this fair?
But aside from fairness, there are other, more profound, questions we can ask when we think about People A. But I'll leave these questions to the imagination for now, as I must finally get back to my own work.
If anyone is interested in joining the film/book club which is starting April 1, please do. We need members. The first book is "Jane Eyre," the story of a poor girl (People A) who winds up marrying a rich man (People
, and lots more happening in between.
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Inna, I didn't address your proposal because I thought it was a joke. The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, which Warren Buffet has given much to, uses the money to the poorest nations overseas, for things like vaccinations and trying to irradicate illnesses that are not present in the USA. Why should we have out government spend billions of dollars to bail out Bear Sterns yet nothing to help all the home owners in danger of foreclosure or even worse-- the people in New Orleans and around the gulf coast who are still homeless since Katrina. What about all the rich conservatives on wall street? Why don't they do what you suggested?
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