Medical Experimentation Topics

Democracy Now! stories, posts and pages that relate to Medical Experimentation

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  • Washington_web

    "Deadly Monopolies": Medical Ethicist Harriet Washington on How Firms are Taking Over Life Itself

    One of the major themes raised by the Occupy movement is the increasing power of large corporations over more and more aspects of our lives. We spend the hour looking into the issue of the corporate control of life itself. Our guest, Harriet Washington, is a medical ethicist and has just published a book that examines the extent to which what she calls the medical-industrial complex has come to control human life. In the past 30 years, more than...
    Oct 31, 2011 | Story
  • Syphilis

    As Grim Details Emerge, Guatemalan Victims Seek Justice for U.S. Medical Experiments in 1940s

    A White House bioethics commission has revealed gruesome new details about venereal disease experiments from 1946 to 1948 in which U.S. medical officials intentionally infected Guatemalan sex workers, prisoners, soldiers and mental patients with syphilis in order to study the effects of penicillin. The commission concluded that nearly 5,500 Guatemalans were subjected to diagnostic testing — without their consent — and more than 1,300 were...
    Aug 31, 2011 | Story
  • Guatemala-study

    Exposed: US Doctors Secretly Infected Hundreds of Guatemalans with Syphilis in the 1940s

    Recently unearthed documents show around 700 Guatemalan soldiers, prisoners, prostitutes and mental patients were infected as part of a study into the effects of penicillin. It’s unclear if the patients were ever cured of the diseases or even given treatment. Hours after the findings were revealed, President Obama apologized to Guatemalan President Álvaro Colom, who called the experiments a "crime against humanity." We speak to...
    Oct 05, 2010 | Story
  • Examining-tuskegee

    The Dark History of Medical Experimentation from the Nazis to Tuskegee to Puerto Rico

    Medical historian Susan Reverby, author of Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and its Legacy, discusses the history of medical experimentation at home and abroad. We also play excerpts of the documentary Deadly Deception: The Tuskegee Study. [includes rush transcript]
    Oct 05, 2010 | Story
  • Torture-report

    Experiments in Torture: Medical Group Accuses CIA of Carrying Out Illegal Human Experimentation

    A new report from Physicians for Human Rights accuses the Bush administration of conducting illegal and unethical human experimentation and research on prisoners in CIA custody. The report details how doctors, psychologists and other professionals monitored the effects of sleep deprivation, waterboarding and other so-called "enhanced interrogation" techniques on more than a dozen prisoners. It charges that CIA doctors and other medical...
    Jun 08, 2010 | Story

  • Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present

    Medical scholar Harriet Washington joins us to talk about her new book, "Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present." The book reveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and the roots of the African American health deficit. It also examines less well-known abuses and looks at unethical practices and mistreatment of blacks that are still taking place in...
    Jan 19, 2007 | Story

  • Guinea Pig Kids: How New York City is Using Children to Test Experimental AIDS Drugs

    A new BBC documentary exposes how the city of New York has been forcing HIV-positive children under its supervision to be used as human guinea pigs in tests for experimental AIDS drug trials. We speak with the filmmaker Jamie Doran and Vera Sharav of the Alliance for Human Research Protection. [includes rush transcript]
    Dec 22, 2004 | Story

  • Plutonium Files: How the U.S. Secretly Fed Radioactivity to Thousands of Americans

    Denver-based journalist Eileen Welsome reveals how as a reporter for the tiny Albuquerque Tribune (circulation 35,000) she uncovered one of the country’s great Cold War secrets: the U.S. government had knowingly exposed thousands of human Guinea pigs with radiation poisoning including 18 Americans who had plutonium injected directly into their bloodstream. [includes rush transcript]
    May 05, 2004 | Story

  • Acres of Skin -- Human Medical Experimentation

    Acres of Skin is a disturbing expose, set in Philadelphia’s Holmesburg prison.
    Jun 11, 1998 | Story

  • US AIDS Experiments on Women and Children in Developing Nations

    Pregnant women in Africa, Thailand, and the Dominican Republic, are being given "treatments" in 9 studies, in which approximately 1000 babies are expected to die as a result of not receiving AZT treatment, the standard regimen. Participants have, in some cases, a 50% chance of getting AZT or a placebo, but all are desperately poor and would be unable to afford paying for AZT. Government and industry claim that these experiments are justified...
    Apr 23, 1997 | Story