poverty is a weapon of mass destruction.

[sophiaserpentia]

A button I picked up this weekend sums it up nicely: Poverty is a weapon of mass destruction.

I can't think of a better way in which this has been demonstrated than the use of poor people as unwitting subjects in medical experiments.

The most recent example is the use of foster children (without their consent or knowledge) in experiments on AIDS medicines.

Government-funded researchers tested AIDS drugs on hundreds of foster children over the past two decades, often without providing them a basic protection afforded in federal law and required by some states, an Associated Press review has found.

The research funded by the National Institutes of Health spanned the country. It was most widespread in the 1990s as foster care agencies sought treatments for their HIV-infected children that weren't yet available in the marketplace.

... Several studies that enlisted foster children reported patients suffered side effects such as rashes, vomiting and sharp drops in infection-fighting blood cells as they tested antiretroviral drugs to suppress AIDS or other medicines to treat secondary infections.

In one study, researchers reported a "disturbing" higher death rate among children who took higher doses of a drug. That study was unable to determine a safe and effective dosage.

It would be horrible enough if this were an isolated case. But no -- we also have:

• The Tuskegee Syphilis experiment, wherein the US Public Health Service allowed almost 400 black men to die slowly of syphilis while monitoring for years the effects of the disease on their bodies.
  
• Several experiments on soldiers (the "Atomic Veterans") and black people to examine the long-term effects of radiation exposure.
  
• In 1966 researchers from Fort Detrick conducted experiments on the spread of airborne bacteria in the subways of New York and in other places.
  
• In the early 1990's, several public health departments pushed Norplant -- birth control implants -- on their patients, especially poor women of color. Many of the women who had severe problems with Norplant had a great deal of trouble having it removed. Some judges even began ordering women to have Norplant inserted -- even after it became obvious that Norplant was a public health menace.
  
• And there are many more examples.

Where's the outrage over this? Where's the outrage over Bhopal and agent orange and lead in inner city soil? High profile cases of animal abuse get more outrage.

Here's where I think the outrage went: I think that at some point, each of us recognized (on a non-conscious level) the evil and dehumanizing nature of the society in which we live, realized there was little we could do about it, and became numb to it. We came to recognize the sublimated cannibalism of social stratification and understood that it was eat or be eaten. The media report on a thousand ways in which the poor and disadvantaged are preyed upon and we turn a blind eye, because we know (again, on an unconscious level) that our gratification comes from the teats of Empire.

Comments

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

"I think that at some point, each of us recognized (on a non-conscious level) the evil and dehumanizing nature of the society in which we live, realized there was little we could do about it, and became numb to it."

This seems to assume that the reader is not an actual victim of the evils you state. I cannot help but be consciously aware of these evils, having been on the receiving end of some of the treatments you speak of.
Oddly enough, when I lived among the poorest people I ever knew, being one of them, there was more sharing and forgiveness and a higher sense of ethics, in terms of caring for each other, than I have seen among people anywhere else.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

This seems to assume that the reader is not an actual victim of the evils you state.

That's the perspective I'm coming from -- I've been middle class my whole life. However I'm starting to wake up to the more subtle ways in which I have been victimized too.

Oh, I forgot to mention Norplant. I'm going to edit the post to include that, because it was something that touched Dee and I personally. She was one of the public health system patients on whom Norplant was pushed. She could never convince them to take it out when she started having trouble with it.

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

Oh, of course not... those welfare queens just want to have it taken out so they can breed like rabbits and make hard working taxpayers pay for it, not because it is nasty and painful and has dreadful side effects! /sarcasm

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

She had it inserted in 1992, when we lived in South Florida. She was still on public assistance and qualified for public healthcare. The public health department people refused repeatedly to remove it. Finally she had it taken out in 1993 because we had moved to Fort Worth and could afford to pay someone at Planned Parenthood to take it out.

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

They try to push risky homonal birth control to all poor women in the South who are on public assistance because it is, at least temporarily, irreversible. They tried to get me to take Depo Provera and I refused. (That's the shot that lasts for three months - it can have some awful side effects.) I told them I was nursing and didn't want to transmit the drug to my child. "Oh, it won't hurt him, it's just birth control and so he'll just be getting birth control!" I said he didn't need birth control and I just got that look - the one that says "Oh, you just want to have a lot of babies so you can get more welfare." Not that I was on welfare or anything, but that is how they see poor women - all uneducated breeders looking to milk the government for all its worth.

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

"However I'm starting to wake up to the more subtle ways in which I have been victimized too."

It is similar to the statement about how so long as gay people are discriminated against, no straight person is free - because the possibility always exists the straight person will be perceived to be gay, and they don't want to be treated badly, so they must avoid all behaviors seen as "gay" in order to avoid discrimination.
You may have been middle class your entire life, but somewhere in your mind, you notice the increasing numbers of homeless on the street. You read about things done to the poor. You try to consciously build up myths about them - "Oh, they are poor just because they are lazy/mentally ill - I am mentally strong and hard working, so that will never happen to me." If you convince yourself poor people are different from you somehow, that they must be complicit in their poverty, it is less frightening. But there is still a subtle, unspoken fear of poverty built into many decisions. Why must one go to college, study hard, not take risks, not speak up when being maltreated at work, avoid decorating ones body in an alternatve fashion (no visible tattoos or piercings), not partake of any substances which the government has forbidden you? To get a high paying job, to keep a high paying job, SO YOU WON'T END UP BEING POOR. This is the unspoken end of many decisions people make. They strive to look "normal" and "presentable" and behave "appropriately" because to do otherwise is to be a dissident and to risk one's economic status, and everything that happens to the poor is an object lesson to you about what can happen to you if you do not toe that line.

Well anyway...

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

I *am* full of outrage, but it seems to be an empty and powerless thing.

Re: Well anyway...

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

It is not empty and powerless -- you have the gift of articulation, and you express your outrage clearly and wonderfully.

Sorry

[neosis.livejournal.com]

I can't really muster much outrage for the children in this case, some of them are alive because of those treatments. On the other hand, the pharmaceutical companies deserve a harsh penalty to remind them that they still have to obey the law.

Unlike the other examples you mention this doesn't demonstrate a callous disregard for life, it illustrates a disregard for the law.

Re: Sorry

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

So, it's okay if it turns out alright in the end? I suppose one could say that some of the children are better off, but the real issue here is the perception of foster children (and poor people in general) as disposable. It is part of a larger pattern. I'm not sure I would feel too grateful if I had learned those decisions had been made for me.

Re: Sorry

[neosis.livejournal.com]

I'm not quite as callous as you suppose. You are proclaiming that this is exploitation of the poor, however, the foster children comprised only 5-10% of the participants in these studies. That means 90%-95% of the children weren't foster children and that simple statistic undermines your case. On the other hand, if the situation were reversed, you'd have a credible case for exploitation, but it's not.

The article even says in most of the cases the biological and/or foster parents were consulted and chose to have the children participate. Children are seldom consulted on what medical treatment they are to receive for the sole reason that they are not competent to judge the alternatives.

It seems to me that the children's guardians wanted them in the program for their benefit and while it looks like some of the researchers didn't hire the independent counsels they were supposed to, I think that has more to do with incompetence than malice or callous diregard for life.

There's some words you should remember in your quest to uncover patterns in society:

"As ye seek so shall ye find" (http://skepdic.com/selectiv.html)

It is truth that always deserves consideration.

Re: Sorry

[daoistraver.livejournal.com]

actually, it was government researchers. The law is orthogonal to them.

Re: Sorry

[neosis.livejournal.com]

I suppose that's the case, it thought originally it was researchers for the drug companies that were responsible, after re-reading it, I'm not sure who the researchers were working for.

Re: Sorry

[pharminatrix.livejournal.com]

They are working for me. That's right. I let them give me foot massages for daily high yields.

I'm a harsh mistress, but my employees remain joyous.

[daoistraver.livejournal.com]

you don't have to be a saint, to not be a sinner.

[daoistraver.livejournal.com]

But, yeah. Poverty sucks. It sucks extra in a society that exists on punishing the victim... such as ours.

They still pay farmers not to grow food.