Feds: Some AIDS Drug Tests Violated Rules (on Foster Children)

[truthpusher]

http://www.journalnet.com/articles/2005/06/16/ap/headlines/d8aorlko1.txt

Feds: Some AIDS Drug Tests Violated Rules
By JOHN SOLOMON
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WASHINGTON - The government has concluded at least some AIDS drug experiments involving foster children violated federal rules designed to ensure vulnerable youths were protected from the risks of medical research.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Human Research Protections concluded that Columbia University Presbyterian Medical Center in New York, where several foster children were enrolled in drug studies in the 1990s, failed to obtain and evaluate whether it had proper consent, information and safeguards for the foster kids.

"When some or all of the subjects (e.g., children) are likely to be vulnerable to coercion or undue influence, additional safeguards have been included in the HHS regulations to protect the rights and welfare of these subjects," the federal agency wrote the research hospital.

The hospital's "records demonstrate a failure ... to obtain sufficient information regarding such safeguards with respect to the enrollment of wards of the state or foster children," the agency concluded.

The Associated Press reported May 4 that federally funded researchers in New York, Illinois and several other states tested AIDS drugs on hundreds of foster children since the 1980s, often without providing the children with special advocates to protect their rights and interests.

complete story: http://www.journalnet.com/articles/2005/06/16/ap/headlines/d8aorlko1.txt

[eternalburn]

1. Illinois, among other states too.....

Foster children used in AIDS research were unprotected


http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05125/499374.stm

~snip~

The research was conducted in at least seven states -- Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Colorado and Texas -- and involved more than four dozen different studies. The foster children ranged from infants to late teens, according to interviews and government records.

~link above~