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Re: [pf] 2 from the Grist: Luna vandalized and human experiments
by Betsy Barnum
29 November 2000 00:18 UTC

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"Fitzsimmons, Diane" wrote:

> TO DRINK PERCHLORATE IS HUMAN
> In what may be the first large-scale study to use volunteers to test
> the effect of a water pollutant on humans, the aerospace behemoth
> Lockheed Martin is funding research in which 100 people are paid
> $1,000 each to take a pill containing the industrial chemical
> perchlorate every day for six months.

If this wasn't in the LA Times, I'd think it was an Onion article in massively
poor taste! It's hard to believe this isn't a spoof, in very dark humor mode,
but the world is looking increasingly like a dystopian science fiction novel
these days. Can this *possibly* be happening?

I can hardly express how appalled I am. Leaving aside entirely the ethical
questions, which are *huge* ($1,000 for people to poison themselves? Who wants
to bet any of the subjects have jobs, homes, or aren't a step or two from
complete despair?), it is incredible to me that they expect to get any kind of
useful results from this grotesque experiment. How are they going to know that
whatever effects these people suffer are due to perchlorate alone? Are they
going to somehow control for the people's exposure, present and past, to the
myriad other toxic and carcinogenic and of-unknown-effect chemicals that
saturate the air and water, and our very bodies, and that interact
synergistically to produce effects even worse than they produce individually?

I'm just about speechless at the self-serving impetus behind this, and it is
even more disturbing that a major university medical center is involved! Then
again, we already know that the academy and health care are just as much
bought and paid for by corporate money as the political system.

"No government agency regulates human experiments"? Surely to heaven this
isn't true. I thought such things were way beyond the pale, legal or
otherwise. Why are rabbits, monkeys and mice used to test chemicals,
cosmetics, food additives, etc., if it's ever been acceptable to experiment on
people? Does this mean that next we'll be hearing about people being paid to
subject themselves to other toxic chemicals, have their eyes held open to test
whether a new shampoo stings, or be injected with tumor material to test new
cancer drugs?

I shudder.

Betsy