Abuses Endangered Veterans in Cancer Drug Experiments (NYT)

[diamond14]

(bushites now using VA Hospitals for "human experiments" on unsuspecting sick Veterans, for the benefit of big drug companies...wake up, America ! )


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/06/nyregion/06vets.html?hp&ex=1107666000&en=7e364714484da3c5&ei=5094&partner=homepage


IN HARM'S WAY

Abuses Endangered Veterans in Cancer Drug Experiments

By DEBORAH SONTAG

Published: February 6, 2005

-snips- from 6 page NYT article.


ALBANY - Carl M. Steubing, a decorated Battle of the Bulge veteran whose experience of war made him a pacifist but also instilled in him a zest for living life at full tilt, took his diagnosis of gastroesophageal cancer in 2001 as a challenge.

In 2001, Mr. Steubing endured about six periodic treatments with an aggressive three-drug chemotherapy combination. Each infusion made him violently ill and forced his hospitalization. He died in March 2002.

Last month, at the federal courthouse in Albany, Mrs. Steubing glared at Mr. Kornak, 53, as he pleaded guilty to fraud, making false statements and criminally negligent homicide in the death of an Air Force veteran, James DiGeorgio. When Mr. Kornak admitted to falsifying the medical data of "subject initials CMS" - Carl M. Steubing - Mrs. Steubing's face crumpled.

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Excluding simple chart reviews, about 80 percent of the department's human research is financed by industry. The private sector pumps considerable cash into the system. In Albany, it accounted for $500,000 of the $1.15 million in research funding in 2004.

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Overwhelmed Watchdogs

In the 1990's, because of a marathon of new drug development, the field of clinical research grew into a multibillion-dollar industry, overwhelming the systems developed to protect human research subjects.

The ethical model for those systems was born in 1947 after German physicians were convicted for performing crippling and deadly medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners. But the Nuremberg Code did not stop unethical research. Well into the 1970's, the federal government sponsored human radiation experiments and the Tuskegee experiments, in which black men with syphilis were studied but not treated or told they had the disease.

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News media reports about abuses of human subjects in West Los Angeles unleashed the fury of Congressional watchdogs, who asked the General Accounting Office to assess the safeguards for veterans who serve as research subjects. The office examined eight Veterans Affairs medical centers and reported "a disturbing pattern of noncompliance with regulations for the protection of human subjects."

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Just under a third of the veterans department's 118 research centers have been accredited so far. Some centers did not pass their initial reviews, and research was curtailed until they showed improvement. One medical center, in Northampton, Mass., failed to earn accreditation. Albany has not yet applied.

[TacticalPeek]

1. Kick.

:kick:

[MisterP]

2. Chimpy says this is a-okay, coz they're "saving lives" (even as they

take dozens away post-haste)