The ad said, “EARN EXTRA MONEY. Make a Difference by Assisting in Medical Research.” The money was good – $460 and all you had to do was swallow a little pill. Or, more precisely, swallow a little pill and sign a few forms.
The MDS Harris Laboratory in Lincoln, Nebraska – you wondered what goes on in Nebraska, didn’t you? – is the only lab in America that currently engages in human experimentation with toxic chemicals. The pills, at least some of them, were filled with a pesticide, Dursban, which is used to kill cockroaches, termites, ticks and fire ants. The Harris lab fed the pesticide to volunteers under a contract from Dow Chemical, the company that makes Dursban.
So what’s the big deal? Don’t people take part in medical experiments all the time? Well, not like this one. People take part in drug trials, because drugs are intended for human consumption and if they work properly, they will improve human health. Roach poison, on the other hand, has no salutary effects. Testing Dursban on human subjects violates the first rule of medical ethics: do no harm.
Here’s what the folks in the Dow Dursban test got for their $460 – nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, shortness of breath, impairment of sensation and chest pain. That’s just short-term. The EPA has said Dursban presents a risk to the central nervous system. I don’t think Dow is going to check back on these people in 20 years to see how they’re doing.
It may come as surprise to you, as it did to me, that human experimentation is even legal. I thought it would have been outlawed after, oh, I don’t know… the Holocaust? Maybe?
When the EPA heard people were upset that Dow Chemical is feeding roach poison to volunteers in Nebraska, the bureaucrats ran right out and appointed a commission to study the scientific and ethical questions. What’s to study? This is not ethical rocket science. Don’t feed people poison, do no harm. One of the members of the review panel said Dow’s experiment was meaningless because poison had not been fed to enough people to provide good data. I don’t know what to think of that.
This is all very familiar territory for the Dow Chemical Corporation of Midland, Michigan. In 1995, human rights activist Harry Wu found photos of Dow executives at a forced labor prison camp chemical factory in northern China. The folks at Dow say they were merely making sales calls. What does a chemical company sell to a concentration camp?
In the mid-1960s, Dow researchers conducted experiments on prisoners in Pennsylvania. In those experiments, prisoners’ backs were painted with 2,3,7,8-TCDD. That’s right, dioxin. The most deadly chemical known to science was put on prisoners’ skin so Dow’s mad scientists could see what would happen.
I had my doubts about talking about this subject, not because I was afraid you wouldn’t believe me, but because I’m afraid it will disillusion and discourage us all. I have the sad duty to reveal to you the truth: another act we assumed was beyond the bounds of civilized, moral behavior, is in fact quite commonplace.
Some days bearing witness hardly seems worth the effort.
Earn Extra Money
The ad said, “EARN EXTRA MONEY. Make a Difference by Assisting in Medical Research.” The money was good – $460 and all you had to do was swallow a little pill. Or, more precisely, swallow a little pill and sign a few forms.
The MDS Harris Laboratory in Lincoln, Nebraska – you wondered what goes on in Nebraska, didn’t you? – is the only lab in America that currently engages in human experimentation with toxic chemicals. The pills, at least some of them, were filled with a pesticide, Dursban, which is used to kill cockroaches, termites, ticks and fire ants. The Harris lab fed the pesticide to volunteers under a contract from Dow Chemical, the company that makes Dursban.
So what’s the big deal? Don’t people take part in medical experiments all the time? Well, not like this one. People take part in drug trials, because drugs are intended for human consumption and if they work properly, they will improve human health. Roach poison, on the other hand, has no salutary effects. Testing Dursban on human subjects violates the first rule of medical ethics: do no harm.
Here’s what the folks in the Dow Dursban test got for their $460 – nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, shortness of breath, impairment of sensation and chest pain. That’s just short-term. The EPA has said Dursban presents a risk to the central nervous system. I don’t think Dow is going to check back on these people in 20 years to see how they’re doing.
It may come as surprise to you, as it did to me, that human experimentation is even legal. I thought it would have been outlawed after, oh, I don’t know… the Holocaust? Maybe?
When the EPA heard people were upset that Dow Chemical is feeding roach poison to volunteers in Nebraska, the bureaucrats ran right out and appointed a commission to study the scientific and ethical questions. What’s to study? This is not ethical rocket science. Don’t feed people poison, do no harm. One of the members of the review panel said Dow’s experiment was meaningless because poison had not been fed to enough people to provide good data. I don’t know what to think of that.
This is all very familiar territory for the Dow Chemical Corporation of Midland, Michigan. In 1995, human rights activist Harry Wu found photos of Dow executives at a forced labor prison camp chemical factory in northern China. The folks at Dow say they were merely making sales calls. What does a chemical company sell to a concentration camp?
In the mid-1960s, Dow researchers conducted experiments on prisoners in Pennsylvania. In those experiments, prisoners’ backs were painted with 2,3,7,8-TCDD. That’s right, dioxin. The most deadly chemical known to science was put on prisoners’ skin so Dow’s mad scientists could see what would happen.
I had my doubts about talking about this subject, not because I was afraid you wouldn’t believe me, but because I’m afraid it will disillusion and discourage us all. I have the sad duty to reveal to you the truth: another act we assumed was beyond the bounds of civilized, moral behavior, is in fact quite commonplace.
Some days bearing witness hardly seems worth the effort.