Saul Krugman experimented on children at the Willowbrook Institution.
After reading the unfortunate story of what happened in Catholic-run orphanages in Ireland, one would think that, that probably was the only horror story of its type. Think again. A similar medical research travesty took place right on Staten Island, New York, USA in which mentally retarded children were intentionally infected with hepatitis in an experiment that lasted fourteen years. It’s known as the “Willowbrook Experiments.”
That research was to investigate the effectiveness of gamma globulin in immunization against hepatitis. Need I say more? As far as I can ascertain—since most of the information about Willowbrook has been expunged from public records, even on the Internet—two trials were conducted and there were deaths that occurred.
The Lancet published “The Willowbrook Letters” in four issues during 1971: April 10, May 8, June 5, and July 10.
Then there was the Tuskegee Syphilis Study that lasted forty years ending November 16, 1972, that involved men who deliberately were medically mismanaged for syphilis to see what would happen when syphilis ran its normal course. As a result, at least 40 wives had been infected along with19 children who contracted syphilis from birth.
In an unethical and immoral research study regarding syphilis, penicillin—the anti-syphilitic treatment since 1943—was not administered to and deliberately withheld from 399 black men (African Americans) with latent syphilis. How outrageously cruel! That is not medical science; that is medical malpractice, I’d say.
Eight months after the Tuskegee study was abandoned, a $1.8 Billion class action lawsuit was filed against the institutions and individuals involved. The government agreed to a distribution of $10 million to living and deceased participants in the Tuskegee study.
In retrospect the Tuskegee Syphilis Study may have been a catalyst for the U.S. Congress enacting the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 (Public Law 99-660) that exonerates vaccine makers from being financially liable for damages to children and others due to the vaccines they manufacture.
However, U.S. vaccine manufacturers now take their wares to foreign and third world countries where vaccine trials are undertaken, often under the guise of providing free vaccines to protect infants and children. One such event happened in India where “Gardasil and Cervarix HPV Vaccine Trials Halted in India After Deaths.”
It boggles the mind how medical ethics can go awry and no one in the profession has the gumption to blow the whistle. Perhaps the old adage, Birds of a feather flock together, really applies to the old boys network, the medical profession. That’s why parents have to become educated about vaccines: the facts, the lies, the science, the pseudo-science, the hype, the media spin, the consequences and the chances of having a disabled child once their child is vaccinated. That is very real and truly life altering.
As the Irish orphanage story and the Willowbrook and Tuskegee stories reveal, medical science and ethics apparently don’t give a damn.
Photo Credit: Family MWR