Talk:Human subject research

From the article:

Please add to this page. Exposing these wrongs can help put pressure on governments and people to stop them. Amnesty International has more information about human experimentation and Mistreatment of prisoners generally.

The Website of Amnesty International

Copyright issue?

A fair amount of the material in this article appears to be identical to material listed as copyright University of Miami here: [1]. Particularly, see "Beecher Article" and Public Health Syphillis Study sections. --Honeygnome 22:06, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Source Request

I'm sure there is a lot more out there to add. I was also looking for further info on the British experimentation on political prisoners pre WWI. Has anyone got any sources, I can't find any. --Dumbo1 22:48, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

The Guardian article re pre WW1 experimentation on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands doesn't seem to have any sources to back it up. Can someone please supply some, otherwise I shall remove that section. --Dumbo1 01:08, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

I wrote to the author of the Guardian article, and six weeks later, still no reponse. Can someone please supply some sources PLEASE! I'd really like to find out what this is supposed to refer to. --Dumbo1 23:08, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Removed it. A Guardian comment piece is not a reliable source of information. I'm not saying that it didn't happen, but it would need to be elaborated on and properly sourced.--Ruby Tuesday 17:03, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

NPOV stuff/Rubbish

New York City: In his documentary Guinea Pig Kids shown on BBC and german television filmmaker Jamie Doran exposed the practice of the New York City Administration of Children's Services to allow and enforce experiments with aids drugs against the will of the children and their relatives. Experiments took place up to 2002 in Incarnation Children's Center and are still going on in other institutions. When the children refused to take the 'medicine' because of the severely damaging effects, they were forced with tubes. Several children died. The children come primarily from black poor families who have no money for expensive lawyers to defend themselves. A nurse who had adopted two children stopped the medicamentation and the children felt much better. As a reaction the authorities took the two children away from her. The companies involved refuse to answer questions.

I've put a NPOV-tag on the page because of this section. First of all, I would want some sources for these EXTREMELY severe allegations. Second, even if these allegations are indeed correct, the text need to be rewritten and a lot of things have to be clarified. A lot of things seems to have been taken out of their context. Why where these kids exposed to the drugs? How can we know that the children who died died because of the medicines? Why would the politicians of New York decide to experiment on children?.

I would like some input from other people to see what you think about this... Otherwise I will remove that part later today. If it is indeed accurate the page can always be reverted... I don't want to risk Wikipedia's reputation (which isn't that good already) with information this dubious.

--Konstantin 16:11, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

A while ago I was reading about how Pfizer (at least I recall it being Pfizer) was coming under fire for apparently distributing new meningitis drugs to Africans children, essentially using them as test subjects. I don't have time to dig up the info at the moment, but if anyone else is familiar with this issue it certainly belongs in this article. I'll try and remember to get back to it at a later time. --Bumhoolery 20:28, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

That sounds great. I will remove the information for now, and maybe if the information is indeed accurate someone can revert the article... --Konstantin 23:54, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Here's what the Incarnation Chilcren's Center has to say about the BBC "expose":

"From 1993 through early 2002, approximately 60 children at Incarnation Children’s Center participated in a nationwide series of clinical trials sponsored by the National Institutes of Health to test the efficacy of medication designed to alleviate suffering and significantly prolong the life of HIV infected children. At ICC, a foster care institution dedicated to the care of children who are infected with HIV, the trials were conducted by faculty at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons.

"ICC was only one of more than 25 foster care institutions in New York City that took part in the trials. Across the country, thousands of HIV infected children took part in the trials. The trials at ICC were successful; where previously the HIV infected children at ICC died, they lived, and are now in adolescence. According to Columbia, none of the children at ICC died as a result of the trials, and while a few experienced reactions to the drug combinations used in the trials, none suffered lasting side effects.

"Over the past months, a number of stories directed against clinical trials, most recently on the BBC, and distorting ICC’s role in the trials have appeared in the media. The source of these stories appears to be a group that holds the view that the HIV virus is not the precursor of AIDS, a view discredited by the world’s scientific and medical communities. The media that reported on ICC have been informed that their sources are a group of HIV deniers; the media has not included this important fact in their reporting. Please see a letter on this subject recently sent out by the New York State Department of Health.

"To better care for the children, who are now living into late childhood and adolescence with their HIV/AIDS controlled by medication, ICC in 2000 was formally converted from a foster care facility to a 21-bed skilled nursing facility regulated by the New York State Department of Health. The drug trials at ICC ended in early 2002, however."

That section on the main page should be removed, again.

-- Shrew2u@yahoo.com --71.107.76.55 01:28, 27 September 2005 (UTC)--

Rumors say that the disabled are experimented on....

Can't confirm, nor disprove this: I've heard that those who are either physically and/or mentally disabled are, as you read this, are being experimented upon. Can a physically and/or mentally impaired person indicate consent ? These people have always been ill treated throughout history, killed in ancient times due to religious reasons, such as a human female having sex with The Devil, and that union produced either a physically and/or mentally impaired person. Some religious sects I've ran into hold these views. Now, rumors surface that these people are being experimented upon, and no one cares. This is NOT vandalisim, nor am I being offensive, just stating what I've seen and heard, no more, no less.Martial Law 01:58, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

I travel the whole US, as, among other things, as a prospector, watercolor/multimedia artist(NO people, due to ongoing debates of what is art, what is profanity/obscenity), and I've heard these stories and worse about human experimentation, such as that performed on the people that are physically and/or mentally impaired. I will NOT repeat any of this, due to Wikipedia policies regarding obscene material.Martial Law 02:07, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

external link to "Jeff Rense"

Regarding this external link: Jeff Rense Article: US Human Experimentation

• What exactly is the reader supposed to read on that page?
• Does this source provide any helpful, well substantiated information on human experimentation?

Thanks...

--Birdmessenger 00:55, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

The article is about the US govt. and/or the military experimenting upon the American people, incl. prisoners,other military personnel,unwitting civilians,and I've heard rumors that children and that people who are either physically and/or mentally impaired are also being experimented upon as well. I also have a copy of a Popular Mechanics magazine that also discusses US govt. and/or military human experimentation.Martial Law 04:56, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Here is the originating source for the article. It is US Secret Human Experimentation. Hope this source is helpful.Martial Law 05:05, 25 November 2005 (UTC) The source is http//:www.healthnewsnet.com/humanexperiments.html.Martial Law 05:08, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Hope this data helps, Birdmessenger. Martial Law 05:27, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Its now a dead link. Can someone update please. --Dumbo1 23:10, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I've found the article again at http://www.rense.com/general36/history.htm . However looking at the other articles at that site, I would want some further sources and verification before using the info. --Dumbo1 23:23, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Human experimentation vs Clinical trials

This page is currently primarily about abuses in human experimentation, much of it historical. My feeling from reading it is that it needs either

• more information about modern clinical trials that are generally considered to be ethically acceptable, if "Human Experimentation" is a neutral term not necessarily implying abuse, or else
• a statement up at the top that (roughly) "This article describes abusive and unethical practices, for information on generally-accepted modern practices, see clinical trials, Nuremburg code, etc. This option assumes that human experimentation does primarily mean abuse, and that we should merely link to information about non-abusive trials, rather than trying to balance the existing page.

So there's the question. Does human experimentation inherently mean abuse, or can the term human experimentation apply to a best-practices clinical trial? ---Csari 15:20, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

The article as it stands now is trash, as noted above. Please heed this person's words and fix it. 216.39.182.234 03:02, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Copyediting

Does this article really need any more copy-editing??Dan 03:59, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Whoa, what is this?

There's a huge section in the After World War II section about the CIA killing people left and right. Now, I'm sure the CIA has killed a lot of people in secret, but this paragraph comes off as total conspiracy-theorist lunacy, and it's got plenty of typos to boot. It should either be deleted or backed up with a lot of evidence. It looks seriously bad. Pulsemeat 04:06, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Vivisection

Despite this, the term is generally recognized as pejorative: one would never refer to life-saving surgery, for example, as "vivisection." The use of the term vivisection when referring to procedures performed on humans almost always implies a lack of consent.

This section might be a bit confusing. I would suggest nowadays, vivisection is pejorative in any case. It's usually only used by those opposed to animal experimentation and as such I think tends to be used mostly in a negative light. Nil Einne 19:17, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Too many categories

This article is extremely cluttered, mainly because of the way it is organised. There are complications with many of the sections, mainly being unneededness, and lack of mutual exclusivity. For example; the section on "in the United States." Why is there a section devoted to human experimentation in the United States, in particular? The country in and of itself doesn't play any pivotal role in the overall history of human experimentation, so devoting a section to it is unneeded; everything that is in that section would fit nicely into another section. As for mutual exclusivity; this is a problem with many of the sections. For example, there is a section on "after World War II." But, "after World War II" isn't mutually exclusive to, say, the Belmont Principles, which is another section. In fact, several of these sections should be sub-sections, if we are to keep the "after World War II" bit. I suppose I am requesting a copy-edit of this page, with an emphasis on organisation and format. MVMosin 07:52, 18 April 2007 (UTC)