Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 21:07:09 -0500
From: Yoshie Furuhashi <Furuhashi.1-AT-osu.edu>
Subject: M-FEM: !*African Women As Guinea Pigs? (fwd)


Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 07:16:59 +0000
From: Marpessa Kupendua <nattyreb-AT-ix.netcom.com>
Subject: !*African Women As Guinea Pigs? (fwd)

FORWARDED MESSAGE
===================
>To: nattyreb-AT-ix.netcom.com
>From: mnovickttt-AT-igc.org (Michael Novick)
>Subject: African Women As Guinea Pigs? (fwd)

>>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 22:44:04 -0400 (EDT)
>>From: Paul Steven Lefrak <plefr-AT-umich.edu>
>>To: free.mumia-AT-umich.edu, anti.racist.action-AT-umich.edu
>>Subject: African Women As Guinea Pigs? (fwd)
>>
>>So while Clinton issues a cheap, politically expedient and belated
>>"apology" for the Tuskegee experiment, looks like the US is doing the
>>same thing now in Africa
>>-PL
>>
>>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>Date: Fri, 2 May 1997 05:22:52 -0700
>>From: John E. Peck <jepeck-AT-students.wisc.edu>
>>To: plefr-AT-umich.edu
>>Subject: African Women As Guinea Pigs? (fwd)
>>
>>
>>(BOSTON GLOBE)
>>
>>US science's cruelty overseas
>>
>>By Robert Kuttner, 04/27/97
>>
>>Thanks to the Public Citizen Health
>>Research Group, it recently came to light
>>that US medical researchers are still using
>>Third World populations as human guinea
>>pigs, with ethical standards that are
>>unacceptable in the United States.
>>
>>The studies, on some 12,000 HIV-positive
>>pregnant women in the Ivory Coast, Uganda,
>>Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and other African
>>countries, are financed by the Centers for
>>Disease Control and the National Institutes
>>of Health.
>>
>>Since 1994, the standard US treatment to
>>reduce mother-child HIV transmission has
>>been the drug AZT during the final weeks of
>>pregnancy. This reduces by about two-thirds
>>the number of infants who contract HIV from
>>their mothers.
>>
>>But in the Third World experiments,
>>conducted under the auspices of US
>>researchers, target populations are divided
>>into several groups. Some receive
>>variations on the effective AZT treatment.
>>Others get a dummy placebo. This allows
>>scientists to measure the efficacy of the
>>different treatment strategies against a
>>``control group'' that gets no medication.
>>
>>The Health Research Group does not object
>>to the variations in the treatment, only to
>>the fact that some subjects receive
>>placebos.
>>
>>According to Dr. Peter Lurie, who amassed
>>the data for the Health Research Group,
>>this unnecessary ``double-blind'' study
>>will result in about 1,000 more
>>HIV-positive children, virtually all of
>>whom will die gruesome deaths. But the
>>Centers for Disease Control takes the
>>position that this approach is ethically
>>defensible because in the absence of the
>>research, none of the target group would
>>benefit.
>>
>>Still, the fact remains that this study
>>violates ethical standards that are
>>strictly enforced at home: Treatments known
>>to be effective are not to be denied human
>>subjects for the sake of ``research.''
>>Nobody contends that these research
>>protocols would have been approved had the
>>subjects been Americans. That's why they
>>had to be conducted on Africans.
>>
>>In a letter to Secretary of Health and
>>Human Services Donna Shalala, Dr. Sidney
>>Wolfe, who directs the Health Research
>>Group, suggested that these experiments
>>also violate the 1995 Helsinki Declaration
>>of the World Medical Association, which
>>requires that the best available therapy be
>>given human subjects, including those in
>>control groups, as well as the Nuremberg
>>Code of Research Conduct, which was adopted
>>after World War II in response to practices
>>of Nazi doctors.
>>
>>Among other provisions, the Nuremberg Code
>>requires that all research should be ``so
>>conducted as to avoid all unnecessary
>>physical and mental suffering and injury.''
>>Shalala's office has not yet replied.
>>
>>The evident double standard for medical
>>research on human subjects raises a much
>>larger question - the proper relation
>>between standards that the US values at
>>home and those we demand in relations
>>between Americans and the rest of the
>>world. This issue becomes more pressing as
>>commerce becomes more globalized.
>>
>>In general, the US government seeks to
>>impose US standards on the rest of the
>>world where the interests of American
>>property owners are at stake but takes a
>>far more relaxed position where other
>>people's interests are involved.
>>
>>For example, in our relations with China,
>>American diplomats are extremely upset that
>>China does not honor US laws regarding
>>intellectual property. If trade
>>negotiations break down, it could well be
>>over Chinese piracy of US patents and
>>copyrights. But China's treatment of
>>workers who produce for export to the US
>>market, including those employed by
>>subsidiaries or partners of US companies,
>>is not an issue in the trade negotiations,
>>nor is the use of child labor or prison
>>labor, nor is the displacement of US
>>workers because of substandard Chinese
>>labor practices.
>>
>>By the same token, protecting the patent
>>interests of US pharmaceutical companies
>>was key to the diplomatic breakthrough that
>>set up the World Trade Organization.
>>
>>The property rights of drug companies are
>>protected overseas, but the products of
>>those same companies are routinely exported
>>for uses not approved in the United States.
>>And they are sometimes tested on human
>>subjects in ways that violate US standards.
>>
>>So there is really a double double standard
>>at work here. It's bad enough that there is
>>one standard for US-sponsored research on
>>Americans and another where the subjects
>>are desperately poor Africans. But the
>>broader double standard is the enforcement
>>by the US government of one set of global
>>rules for powerful American corporations,
>>wherever they operate, and far weaker rules
>>for ordinary citizens of the planet,
>>foreign and domestic.
>>
>>Robert Kuttner's column appears regularly
>>in the Globe.
>>
>>This story ran on page e7 of the Boston
>>Globe on 04/27/97.
>>
>>John Peck c/o UW Greens, 731 State St., Madison, WI 53703  #608-262-9036
>>
>>"Science explores.  Technology executes.  Man conforms."
>>                        - motto of the 1933 World Fair held in Chicago, IL
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
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