The killing of a corgi shows how government power has grown unchecked in China in the name of Covid prevention

CHINA OWNS BIDEN!

BIDEN LOVES CHINA…

Therefore, BIDEN WILL NEVER STAND UP TO CHINA! And THIS IS CHINA!

Here is the article from CNN below

Analysis by Nectar Gan and Steve George, CNN

Updated 0924 GMT (1724 HKT) November 15, 2021 

This corgi was killed by health workers in China in the name of Covid prevention, sparking public outrage.

Hong Kong (CNN)A series of loud bangs startle the sleeping corgi, driving it out of its bed. The door opens and two people dressed in full hazmat suits enter the living room, one carrying a crowbar and another a yellow plastic bag. “Did the leader say we need to settle it right here on the spot?” one of them can be heard asking. “Yes,” the other replies, as he proceeds to move a table the corgi was hiding under, and strike the animal on the head with the crowbar. The dog whimpers and runs off camera to another room.The unsettling scene, captured by a security camera and shared online by the dog’s owner, shows the last moments before the pet was killed in its home by Covid prevention workers in the Chinese city of Shangrao, in southeastern Jiangxi province, on Friday, while the corgi’s owner was undergoing compulsory quarantine in a nearby hotel.

The killing of the dog, which triggered a massive outcry on Chinese social media over the weekend, is the latest example of the extreme measures taken by local authorities in China in pursuit of zero-Covid.

Local authorities in China are under tremendous pressure to curb infections, as a renewed Delta variant outbreak continues to spread across the country. So far, more than 1,300 cases have been reported in about two-thirds of provinces in the country. Amid the outpouring of shock and anger, the dog’s death has sparked heated debate about animal rights, as well as no shortage of reflection on just how far unchecked government power can be expanded during the pandemic at the expense of individual rights.The residential community where the dog lived is under lockdown due to a handful of confirmed Covid-19 cases. All residents were required to enter into government quarantine on Friday, and were not allowed to bring their pets with them, the owner said on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform.

Survillance footage shows the corgi hit by a health worker with a crowbar.The owner, whose surname is Fu and has so far tested negative for the virus, said community workers had repeatedly reassured her before she left for quarantine on Friday morning that they would not take away or kill the dog during the building’s disinfection. But by the afternoon, Covid prevention workers had barged into her apartment to hit the dog, according to the owner.”The dog tried to avoid the beating and fled into the bedroom, and therefore it wasn’t recorded by surveillance camera, but (I) could hear faint wails. A few minutes later, they said they’ve dealt with it and would take it away, holding a yellow plastic bag in their hands,” she wrote in a since-deleted post. “Even now I don’t know whether my dog is alive or dead, and where it has been taken,” she added. In a statement late on Saturday, the local government of Xinzhou district, where the complex is located, confirmed the dog was killed as part of the need to “thoroughly disinfect” homes in the community.But it admitted Covid prevention workers had “safely disposed” of the dog without communicating fully with the owner. The workers involved had been criticized and removed from their positions, it said, adding they had apologized to the owner and gained her understanding.On Weibo, however, the owner claimed she was pressured by local authorities and her employer to delete her posts. CNN has reached out to the owner, who was not named by the government, and the Jiangxi provincial government for comment.

Halloween Covid scare forces Shanghai Disney into lockdown as China steps up efforts to eradicate virus

It’s not the first time Chinese authorities have killed pets as part of their stringent Covid response. In September, three cats in the northeastern city of Harbin were killed after testing positive for the virus without consent from their owner, who was in hospital quarantine after contracting the virus.Not all local governments are as stringent when it comes to dealing with pets, however. In January, Shanghai authorities were widely praised for allowing residents to bring their pets into centralized quarantine with them. Animals in different countries have contracted Covid-19, including domestic pets, zoo animals and livestock, with humans the primary source of these infections.But although scientists say Covid-19 likely originated in animals before becoming widespread among humans, there is no evidence animals are playing a significant role in the spread of the virus to people, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.And in the latest incident, the dog was killed before it was even tested for Covid, according to the owner.”When they hadn’t even confirmed whether the dog was negative or positive (for Covid), they barged into the owner’s home and beat the dog to death. Is this the management level of the government?” a top comment on Weibo said.In its statement, the district government said residents had been asked not to lock their doors before they left for quarantine, and Covid prevention workers opened the owner’s door by force under the witness of police officers.The move has sparked a fierce backlash from pet owners and sympathizers, while others see it as a necessary sacrifice for the “greater good” of society, arguing that human lives are more important than animals’.

But for some, there is another crucial question to be asked: just how much more power has the government amassed in the name of Covid prevention, at the cost of individual rights and liberties?”From the earlier killing of the three cats to today’s killing of the dog, it’s getting worse and worse. The so-called debate around ‘animal rights’ is merely a camouflage — the issue at heart here has always been the wanton infringement of individual (rights) by the endlessly expanding state power,” a comment on Chinese social media site Douban said

Japan drops vax rollout, goes to Ivermectin, ENDS COVID almost overnight

WORLDNEWSDESK 27 OCTOBER 2021  HITS: 418740

The ongoing COVID-19 nonsense here in the United States exists solely and exclusively because our governments have failed to use the correct treatment.  They used so-called “vaccines” when Japan has just proven, in less than ONE MONTH, that Ivermectin can wipe out the disease.

Publisher’s Note:

It has come to my attention that a small web site calling itself “LeadStories.com” claims this article is not correct because THEY could find no information on any Japan Government Health Web Site about it.  Clearly, THEIR inability to find something does not make this article “not correct.”   The simple truth is that in September, the head of the Tokyo Medical Association went on national television and told Doctors to start using Ivermectin.  They did.  Here we are, a little over a month later, and COVID is almost non-existent in Japan!   We stand by our story.

For what it’s worth, the web site “LeadStories.com” ranks 92,476 in the world.   The Hal Turner Show site is much larger, ranking as 85,341 in the world.   Smaller sites like LeadStories.com try to make themselves bigger, by attacking larger web sites like this one.  But their shoddy journalism is evident on it’s face.  

In case you’re interested, LeadStories.com never contacted the Hal Turner Radio Show to inquire about our story before they wrote smearing us.  What kind of “journalist” writes a story without contacting the actual subject of the story?   A useful idiot, maybe?  Someone who is only interested in touting the party line, maybe? Someone who has an agenda to push, maybe? You be the judge.

— Hal Turner

Sweden’s Public Health Agency on Wednesday recommended a temporary halt to the use of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine among young adults, citing concerns over rare side effects to the heart. It said the pause should initially be in force until December 1, explaining that it had received evidence of an increased risk of side effects such as inflammation of the heart muscle (myocarditis) and inflammation of the pericardium (pericarditis). {link to CBS News (Secure)]

Finland, Denmark and Norway have also moved away from the COVID vaccines. 

Finland last Thursday joined Sweden, Denmark and Norway in recommending against use of Moderna Inc.’s Covid-19 vaccine in younger age groups, citing risks of rare cardiovascular side effects they said warranted the precautionary steps.

Finland’s Institute for Health and Welfare said last Thursday it would pause use of the Moderna vaccine among men under the age of 30, following a similar step last Wednesday by Swedish regulators. Denmark last Wednesday said it wouldn’t offer the Moderna vaccine to under-18s as a precautionary measure.

Norway on Wednesday advised that all under-18s shouldn’t be given the Moderna vaccine, even if they had already received one dose, and recommended that men under 30 consider getting the vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech instead. Norwegian officials cited U.S., Canadian and Nordic data, saying the absolute risks remain low and calling the advice “a precautionary measure.”

The European Medicines Agency said Thursday that new preliminary data from the Nordic countries supports a warning the agency adopted in July that inflammatory heart conditions called myocarditis and pericarditis can occur in very rare cases following vaccination with Covid-19 shots made by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech.

By far, however, the absolute superstar among foreign nations dealing with COVID is Japan.  Japan has PULLED the vaccines and substituted Ivermectin – and in one month, wiped COVID out in that country!

* Safe? Japan pulls Moderna vax, ends nationwide vax drive after “magnetic” “metals” found to contaminate jabs: [link to asia.nikkei.com (secure)]

* Three lots of Moderna jabs recalled in Japan over stainless steel contamination: [link to www.rt.com (secure)]

* Several Japanese cities report white stuff floating in jab vials: [link to www.zerohedge.com (secure)]

* Japan minister of health tells docs to recommend IVM: [link to rclutz.com (secure)]

* Japan now a MAJOR SUCCESS STORY after it BEATS COVID rapidly: [link to www.msn.com (secure)]

Any questions?

Just so you understand the timeline.

By September deaths from the COVID-19 Vaccine jabs were being investigated.

At roughly that time, the vials were under scrutiny and metal “magnetic” material was found in them.

Very shortly thereafter, the Japanese minister of health announced doctors could prescribe Ivermectin.

A month later, the Western press is shocked that COVID has all but disappeared from the island.

Get it?

Understand?

This is what it looks like in a country that still has rule of law. The governemnt responds to reports of death and contaminated vaxes, moves to real treatment, people get better, and the virus disappears.

Now compare that to what is happening in the United States and in Australia and New Zealand.  All three countries are in dismal failure in their handling of COVID-19, and that failure has resulted in staggering loss of freedom and destruction of commerce.

This is the biggest news story right now.

Japan has ended COVID. It did it after it stopped the vax rollout and went to Ivermectin.

Period. Hard stop.

Hal Turner Editorial Opinion

If your government really wanted to end COVID, if that was its true goal, it would do what Japan did.

You can use Japan as a case study any time someone starts yammering some crap about how the vax is about helping you help yourself from getting others sick with what they’ve been vaxed against.

You use it as a case study when they try to make some lame argument about how the government is really really really trying its best to end COVID and it is the MAGA crowd that is causing the variants and keeping the virus around.

Japan stopped vaxing.  Japan went to IVM.  Japan is COVID-free. It did it in less than a month!

So if your government won’t do what Japan did, now that JAPAN HAS BEAT COVID, what does it say about your government?

It says the conspiracy theorists were right! They were right. It is a damning conviction of the narrative that the government is somehow a benevolent force against you getting viruses.

No, because we now have historic precedent of a government doing the right thing and getting the WIN.

If your government won’t do it, it is because the vax is about something other than the public good.

Hmmmm. What could it be about? How about totalitarian control!

Japan got started vaxing later, and quit earlier than Massachusetts. Massachusetts is still fighting COVID with a couple thousand breakthrough cases per week. Japan is done.

Explanation for The Texas Assembly and More from Anna von Reitz | #3375 to 3383

Compliments of David R… http://mainerepublicemailreport.com

It’s time for Texas to get “stood up” and ready for the great advances that are coming. Put aside all the bickering, and move on.

Explanation for The Texas Assembly
By Anna Von Reitz
Last month a group of dissident Co-Coordinators led by Kyle L. Worley decided to leave The Texas Assembly, however, they hadn’t done their homework and didn’t quite realize what they were doing. So, then, they recanted, and asked to come back as Assembly Members.
That is an entirely different matter than being reinstated as Coordinators.
Then, they asked to present a Go Forward Plan, which any member or group of members can do.
They were told to attend the regularly scheduled meeting of The Texas Assembly to do so, and Katherine Soulis who is the only Coordinator left in Texas, agreed to host their presentation.
Simple, right?
Instead of following instructions, they held their own meeting instead. Enough said.
Katherine Soulis is the only Coordinator out of that entire team who studied hard enough to know what needed to be done, and she was the only one who showed the loyalty, courage, and competence to get it done.
So that’s why she is the Texas Coordinator and the reason that she deserves everyone’s support.
She also needs new Co-Coordinators —- people who are ready to study and learn and take up responsibility for leading their part of Texas through the Assembly Process.

3375. Direct to Colorado http://annavonreitz.com/directtocolorado.pdf 3376. We Have Announced What We Are Doinghttp://annavonreitz.com/…

More from Anna von Reitz | #3375 to 3383

Please contact Katherine directly if you are interested. Because Coordinators sometimes deal with financial matters, candidates are vetted and go through simple background checks.

See this article and over 3300 others on Anna’s website here: www.annavonreitz.com

Biden’s massive spending bill set to collide with debt ceiling, funding fights after CBO score delay

Defense authorization bill, government funding, debt ceiling and social spending bill will make December hectic, high-stakes month in Congress

Tyler OlsonPublished 36 mins ago

video

After months of trying to force their massive social spending bill onto President Biden’s desk, congressional Democrats are confronting the reality that the effort will drag past Thanksgiving and collide with other major issues that could put its passage in doubt.

A major reason for this is that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is likely to take at least a few more days, and potentially into next week, to produce a score for the nearly $2 trillion bill. 

House moderates say they won’t vote on the bill without enough information from the CBO on it – it is not clear how much is enough, though they said they intend to vote on the bill this week. And the Senate cannot even take up the bill without a CBO score because of its rules under budget reconciliation, the process Democrats are using to circumvent a GOP filibuster. 

“Timing of consideration of the [Build Back Better Act] in the Senate will largely depend on when the House sends us the bill and when CBO finalizes their scores for all of the committees, which are needed to complete the ‘Byrd Bath’ process,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told Senate Democrats Sunday. 

TOP BIDEN ECONOMIC ADVISER SAYS $1.75T SPENDING BILL WILL REDUCE INFLATION

Schumer previously said he wanted the Senate to work on passing the bill this week, but it is now clear that will be impossible. That means after the holiday, both chambers will face down a crush of high-stakes issues that could make or break Biden’s presidency, buoy or tank the economy, and potentially keep lawmakers in the Capitol deep into the holiday season. 

“I ask that you please keep your schedule flexible for the remainder of the calendar year. As you can see, we still have much work to do to close out what will be a very successful year of legislative accomplishments,” Schumer added in a letter. 

If the House manages to pass reconciliation, it will go to the Senate, where Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., says he is concerned about sky-high inflation numbers. 

“By all accounts, the threat posed by record inflation to the American people is not ‘transitory’ and is instead getting worse. From the grocery store to the gas pump, Americans know the inflation tax is real and D.C. can no longer ignore the economic pain Americans feel every day,” Manchin said last week. 

BIDEN’S TAX BREAKS FOR LOCAL MEDIA AN EFFORT TO TURN THEM INTO ‘VERSIONS OF LEFTIST NPR OR PBS,’ CRITIC SAYS

The senator previously said he wanted a “pause” on big government spending bills because of inflation. 

Meanwhile, government funding expires on Dec. 3, and both houses will have to advance an appropriations bill or yet another continuing resolution to prevent a government shutdown. 

Looming large above everything else is the debt ceiling increase. 

Senate Republicans said they would not vote to increase the debt limit earlier this year before reversing course at the last minute when Democrats appeared to be marching toward default. 

They voted for a temporary debt ceiling increase to prevent economic calamity, but the government is set to hit the debt limit again in the coming weeks. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has promised that Democrats won’t get any Republican help to raise the debt limit again. 

BIDEN SPENDING BILL WOULD BREAK HIS MIDDLE-CLASS TAX PLEDGE, ANALYSIS SAYS

“I will not be a party to any future effort to mitigate the consequences of Democratic mismanagement,” McConnell said in a letter to Biden last month. “Your lieutenants on Capitol Hill now have the time they claimed they lacked to address the debt ceiling through standalone reconciliation, and all the tools to do it.”

Exactly when the government will hit the debt limit is unclear. The temporary increase was initially targeted at Dec. 3, the same day as government funding legislation expires. But most experts expected it would last longer. 

After Congress passed the infrastructure bill, however, that timeline could slide back up, and leaders of both parties have been almost completely silent on how they expect to raise the debt limit this time. 

Adding to the legislative morass will be the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The Senate plans to advance that bill this week, but after Thanksgiving the two chambers will be forced to sync up their two versions of the bill, which could present some challenges. 

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ON FOX BUSINESS

All of this is assuming that the House actually passes the reconciliation bill this week. That could be put in jeopardy if the CBO numbers depart from the White House’s estimates. Moderates could cite that as a reason to continue their blockade of the bill. In fact, moderates may be emboldened after progressives lost their biggest leverage over them in the infrastructure bill. 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Friday she expects more information from the CBO Monday. 

FOX Business’ Chad Pergram contributed to this report

Welcome to REAL INFLATION

U.S. consumer prices jump 6.2% in October, the biggest inflation surge in more than 30 years

Jeff Cox

Inflation across a broad swath of products that consumers buy every day was even worse than expected in October, hitting its highest point in more than 30 years, the Labor Department reported Wednesday.

The consumer price index, which is a basket of products ranging from gasoline and health care to groceries and rents, rose 6.2% from a year ago, the most since December 1990. That compared with the 5.9% Dow Jones estimate.

On a monthly basis, the CPI increased 0.9% against the 0.6% estimate.

Stripping out volatile food and energy prices, so-called core CPI was up 0.6% against the estimate of 0.4%. Annual core inflation ran at a 4.6% pace, compared with the 4% expectation and the highest since August 1991.

Fuel oil prices soared 12.3% for the month, part of a 59.1% increase over the past year. Energy prices overall rose 4.8% in October and are up 30% for the 12-month period.

Used vehicle prices again were a big contributor, rising 2.5% on the month and 26.4% for the year. New vehicle prices were up 1.4% and 9.8%, respectively.

Food prices also showed a sizeable bounce, up 0.9% and 5.3% respectively. Within the food category, meat, poultry, fish and eggs collectively rose 1.7% for the month and 11.9% year over year.

The price increases meant that workers fell further behind.

In a separate report, the Labor Department said real wages after inflation fell 0.5% from September to October, the product of a 0.4% increase in average hourly earnings that was more than offset by the CPI surge.

Shelter costs, which make up one-third of the CPI computation, increased 0.5% for the month and are now up 3.5% on a year-over-year basis, pointing to more reasons for concern that inflation could be more persistent than policymakers anticipate. The annual pace is the highest since September 2019.

“Inflation is clearly getting worse before it gets better, while the significant rise in shelter prices is adding to concerning evidence of a broadening in inflation pressures,” said Seema Shah, chief strategist at Principal Global Investors.

The data comes as policymakers such as Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen maintain that the current price pressures are temporary and related to Covid pandemic-specific issues. While they have conceded that inflation has been more persistent than they expected, they see conditions returning to normal over the next year or so.

Stock market futures fell following the report and bond yields rose.

Escalating inflation could cause the Fed to tighten policy more quickly than it has signaled. The central bank has indicated that it will within the next few weeks start reducing the amount of bonds it buys each month, though officials have indicated that interest rate hikes are still off in the future.

Traders on Wednesday morning were pricing in two rate increases in 2022 and about a 44% probability of a third hike, according to the CME’s FedWatch tool. The Fed has indicated a narrow likelihood of just one increase ahead, though St. Louis Fed President James Bullard told CNBC overnight that he sees two.

Other market-based measures also have turned more hawkish, with the 5-year breakeven rate, which compares Treasury yields to inflation-indexed bonds, hitting a record high above 3%.

A separate report Wednesday showed that initial claims for jobless benefits edged lower to 267,000, a fresh pandemic-era low after declining 4,000 from the previous week. That was below the Dow Jones estimate for 269,000.

Continuing claims, which run a week behind, increased by 59,000 to 2.16 million, while the total receiving benefits under all programs fell by 107,095 to 2.56 million. The latter number was at 21.7 million a year ago.

Correction: Annual core inflation ran at a 4.6% pace, compared with the 4% expectation and the highest since August 1991. An earlier version misstated the month and year.

Journalism Ethics 101 – My Conversations with New York Times by Reporter Janny Scott-Continuation C – of Current research findings… in progross:

Continuation C – of Current research findings… in progross:

Journalism Ethics 101 – My Conversations with New York Times Reporter Janny Scott
August 3rd, 2008 — —

Twenty Questions on Ethics and Standards for the New York Times.
In 2005, I was interviewed by New York Times reporter Janny Scott about the Incarnation Children’s Center (ICC) scandal. My investigation had revealed that orphaned children were being used in taxpayer and Pharma–funded drug studies in a Catholic orphanage in New York City.
The studies involved FDA Black-Box labeled drugs, in high doses and combinations. (The FDA Black Box label indicates that a drug has caused permanent damage or has killed patients taking the drug, at its normal, prescribed dose). Orphans were receiving a half dozen of these drugs at once.
• My published work featured interviews with the medical director of the ICC, and children, guardians and current and former employees from the drug-test orphanage.
• In my reporting, I reviewed and cited the medical literature on the putative Aids drugs and HIV tests used in the ICC orphanage.
• I named and reviewed the studies listed in the government’s clinical trials database (clincialtrials.org) that were being conducted at the orphanage and its referring hospitals.
• In the course of my reporting, I had also been able to enter the ICC orphanage itself, undercover, with one of the families I was working with, and I reported on what I experienced in meeting the children held there.
The story was followed up by numerous news agencies, and spawned several independent investigations, as well as a BBC documentary (that was later attacked by pro-pharma/drug activists).
The New York Times caught up with the story by mid 2005; Times reporter, Janny Scott, interviewed me by phone and then in an email correspondence that lasted over a month. I supplied her with referenced material, and also with contact information, phone numbers and names for my inside sources (as well as my sources permission and agreement to be interviewed by the Times).
Ms. Scott (and her junior writing partner, Leslie Kaufman), also had access to all the materials already published on the ICC story by myself and independent news agencies [1, 2, 3].
She took my interview, sources and information, but suppressed all of it in her reporting. She did not cite me correctly relating to the publication of my article. She misquoted me from emails that I sent her, and she actively suppressed the sources I gave her, who had inside information about the ICC trials.
Her report did not list a single recorded negative drug side-effect, FDA drug warning, or any of the actual studies being done at the ICC; nor did it feature the testimony of any parent or guardian of a child who was being asked or forced to take these drugs.
Here is what Scott wrote about the trials for the New York Times [5]:
“It was seen as one of the great successes of AIDS treatment. In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, hundreds of children in New York City were dying of AIDS. The only approved drugs were for adults, and many of the patients were foster children. So doctors obtained permission to include foster children in what they regarded as promising drug trials.”
Later in the article, Scott admits that the “permissions” for many of these children are “missing,” (or were never there).
She continued:
“[T]here is little evidence that the trials were anything but a medical success.“
As to the controversy, Scott summed up the piles of research on drugs and studies that I’d published, and that I sent her, as well as her interviews with me and my sources – mothers of children from the ICC – this way:
“Most of the [ethical] questions have arisen from a single account of abuse allegations – given by a single writer about people not identified by real names, backed up with no official documentation as supporting proof, and put out on the Internet in early 2004 after the author was unable to get the story published anywhere else.”

She concluded:
“Whatever the outcome, the controversy has already demonstrated the power of a single person armed only with
access to the Internet and an incendiary story to put major institutions on the defensive.”
At the time of publication, I, and others, wrote critical letters-to-the-editor to Ms. Scott and her employers, but neither she, nor her editors responded to them, and the Times never printed a single opposing view to their front-page story.
In 2008, I tried again, and wrote Janny Scott, again addressing my concerns to her. She responded, and in the course of this second correspondence, she admits that she had not, in fact, read or reviewed a single medical record of any of the children who were given the Black Box drugs, despite having claimed (on the front page of a national paper), that the trials weren’t “anything but a medical success.”
• She also admits that she took, but did not use, interviews with my major sources, mothers who had children in the ICC.
• She agrees that she did receive materials from me on the drugs in question, but likewise did not use (suppressed) the information.
• She also claims to have forgotten or lacks the ability to remember important pieces of information, including whether she did or did not interview the medical director of ICC, Dr. Katherine Painter [4].
The correspondence ends with a letter from myself to Janny Scott and her editor, Joe Sexton, containing twenty questions regarding the ethics, standards and practices employed by the New York Times in reporting contentious pharmaceutical issues, such as the use of orphaned children in Black-Box-Drug clinical trials.
Neither Janny Scott, nor her editor, have responded.
Media and legal inquiries are welcome. Please read the letters and see the open challenge at Rethinking Aids. References
1 The original 2004 expose’:
• The House That Aids Built Altheal.org (January, 2004)
2 Related and independent follow-up investigation/reporting:
• New York Post 1 | 2 | 3
• FoxNews
• UK Guardian
• Associated Press
• Guinea Pig Kids Documentary ACFTV/BBC/NDR Fernsehen (2004) ◦ FilmTranscript
◦ “Guinea Pig Kids” producer interview on Democracy Now
• Drugs, Disease, Denial New York Press (2005)
• Red Flags Weekly Red Flags Weekly (2005)
• Asking the Questions A&U Magazine (May 2004)
• Banana Ethics A&U Magazine (June 2005)
• What Were They Thinking? A&U Magazine (August 2005)
3 Liam Scheff’s ICC and Aids drug/Hiv test reporting prior to Times article:
• Orphans on Trial New York Press (2004)
• Still on Trial New York Press (March 2005)
• The ICC Investigation Continues Altheal.org (2004)
• Noble Doctors CruxMagazine (2004)
• The Truth About Nevirapine GNN (2004)
• Knowing is Beautiful and Sex Crimes GNN (January and March 2005)
• All the News That Fits GNN (April, 2005)
• The NIH Scandal and the Future of Aids Research (June, 2005)
Immediately following the Times article:
• Inside Incarnation NY Press July/August 2005
• Lizz Brown Show Interview
• Guinea Pig Kids (co-writing) Hustler, October2005

Since then:
• The Good Man at the NIH GNN (2006)
• Does the New York Times Want to Kill Gay Men? GNN (2006)
• ICC Webpage and Clinical Trials GNN (2007)
• The ICC Interviews ARAS/YBYL (2007)
• ICC Thalidomide Document ARAS/YBYL (2007)
• There Will Be No Heterosexual Aids Epidemic, Experts Admit GNN (2008)
4 Interviews with Dr. Katherine Painter, Medical Director of the ICC: “House that Aids Built,” “The ICC Investigation Continues,” “Orphans on Trial,” (see footnote 3). Extended interview with Audio: The ICC Interviews ARAS, 2007.

5. Janny Scott’s 2005 New York Times article Belated Charge Ignites Furor Over AIDS Drug Trial Janny Scott, Leslie Kaufman, New York Times (July 17, 2005). Sunday National Edition, p.A-1, First Section, Front Page.
   6 Unpublished Letters to the NY Times:
   • NY Times to the Rescue GNN (2005)
   • Another Attack on Authentic Journalism From the Wilderness (2005)
   • Seven Unpublished letters to the New York Times AHRP (2005)
   Read the entire correspondence at RethinkingAids. Three letters from the correspondence:
   —————————————————————————————————————–
   TWO – Monday, June 2, 2008. From: Janny Scott To: Liam Scheff. Cc: Leslie Kaufman (leslie @ nytimes.com).
   Dear Mr. Scheff,
   Thank you for your note. I will attempt to address your questions in the order you raised them.
   As you know from our conversations in 2005, the aim of the article the Times published was to explain the history and context of the controversy that resulted in 2004 and 2005 from your article; we did not presume to determine the relative advantages and disadvantages of, for example, using AZT or micronutrient therapy or other approaches in children with HIV in the late 1980’s. We are newspaper reporters, not biomedical researchers.
   We never suggested, as you say, that the cases you cited in your article online were “made up stories.” We simply noted that the article that had triggered the controversy did not include the actual identities of the people involved in cases you cited. As you know, the use of anonymous sources and pseudonyms in journalism is noteworthy, in that in some people’s eyes it can influence the credibility of allegations being made.
   Yes, we interviewed many people whom we did not end up quoting in the article. That is common practice in heavily reported newspaper pieces. It is simply not possible to include comments from every person one interviews and to still produce an article of a length that a newspaper can run.
   What are the “many factual errors” you say were made in describing the article cited? And I don’t know what you mean about “ridiculing” the fact that you know some people who are alive 20 years after their diagnosis.
   There seems to me nothing ridiculous about that. It’s simply a fact that, it seemed to me, understandably influenced the way you viewed what was done at ICC.
   I am quite certain that I did not “mis-report” what you told me about the publication of the original story. You certainly did not tell me that it was “in line at Red Flags Weekly and Mothering magazine” and that you decided to pull it. You never said, “Nobody on the Left would touch it.” The quote I used was a direct quote and would not have been changed.
   Finally, you say you sent several notes after the piece ran “but never heard back.” The Times moved a year ago so I no longer have a lot of older files, but I do not recall receiving your notes and am quite certain I would have responded had I received them. Sincerely,
   Janny Scott
   —————————————————————————————————————–
   SIX – Sunday, June 29, 2008, From: Janny Scott To: Liam Scheff.
   Liam,
   No, we did not review patients’ medical files. I would be surprised if that would not have been a breach of patient confidentiality if someone had shown them to us.
   An unexpected side effect would have been a side effect not previously seen in response to those drugs, presumably.
   Advanced testing methods were the methods available at the time for diagnosing HIV infection.
   I do not recall interviewing Dr. Painter but I may simply not remember. As you know, the Times moved to a new office a year ago. It was not possible to move all of our files. In my case, I threw away files that were more than 12 months old. As you know, the story you are asking about was done in 2005.
   I do not recall which studies we looked at. There were a lot of them — some more easily accessible than others, as you know.
   As for mentioning side-effects and FDA warnings, there are side-effects and FDA warnings on many if not most drugs. The side-effects of early AIDS drugs have been written about extensively. And, as I have said before, we were not presuming to judge whether or not experimental AIDS drugs should have been tried on children — a question that I suspect few journalists would be qualified to answer; we were attempting to put a public controversy in context.
   If you have further objections to the way the story was handled, I suggest you contact Joe Sexton, the editor of the metropolitan news section of the paper and the editor on that story.
   Janny
   —————————————————————————————————————–
   TEN – Saturday, July 5, 2008. From: Liam Scheff To: Janny Scott.
   Cc: Joe Sexton (NY Times editor), David Crowe (ARAS.ca.ab) Patricia Warren (A&U Magazine), Vera Sharav (AHRP.org)
   Subject: Re: ICC story – Liam Scheff to NY Times reporter Janny Scott – reviewing your responses
   Janny,
   I’ve been reviewing your responses, and have discovered many serious inconsistencies in your answers. I was interviewed at length by you in 2005, and was misrepresented and misquoted by you in print. I have sent letters to the editor that have never received a response or been printed in your paper.
   Please address answers the following, to myself and to your editor.
   (Please find attached a record of our current email correspondence, the letters-to-the-editor sent to the Times in 2005, and three letters from our 2005 email correspondence).
6. You said that the purpose of your story was not to render a verdict on the ethics of the drug trials at the ICC orphanage.
   You wrote: “We did not set out to render a verdict, a decade and a half later, on the rightness or wrongness of experimental drug therapies used in the late 1980’s on children with HIV.”
   But your story opens with the line: “It was seen as one of the great successes of AIDS treatment. In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, hundreds of children in New York City were dying of AIDS. The only approved drugs were for adults, and many of the patients were foster children. So doctors obtained permission to include foster children in what they regarded as promising drug trials.”
   You later admit that the “permissions” for many of these children are “missing,” (or were never there) but that fact doesn’t affect your opening pitch. You don’t bother to entertain the question of ethics around inventing “permission” to use orphans in clinical trials. You support it, from your opening line.
   A few lines later, you add:
   “[T]here is little evidence that the trials were anything but a medical success.”
   You provide no data in any portion of your article on any study done on these children at the ICC. You provide no medical data or personal interview from any child from the orphanage. You provide no data on the effects of the drugs used on any individual who was enrolled in any of these trials. You describe no negative effect of the drugs. You credit them with saving lives, but you give no single example of a life that was saved, and you buried the stories of women whose children were made sick from the drugs.
   You rendered a verdict from the opening. Your claim to have done anything else plainly dishonest.
   Q1: What is the New York Times’ policy on reporting the details of drug trials?
   Q2: What is the New York Times’ policy on reporting “missing permissions” for orphans used in drug trials? Is it standard practice to defend organizations that claim to have “missing permissions,” that they can only claim to have ever had, in order to justify the use of orphans in drug trials?
7. You say that “there is little evidence that the trials were anything but a medical success.” But you admit to not reviewing a single medical case history. You wrote: “No, we did not review patients’ medical files.”
   Q3: Did you interview any children from the ICC?
   Q4: Did you ask them about their health on and off the drugs, or about the effects of the drugs?
   You also revealed no study data, and no drug warnings or effects.
   Q5: On what grounds do you make a claim that these studies benefited any particular or specific child?
   Q6: Can you name and give a detailed history of any particular child who was benefited by any of the three dozen studies done at the ICC?
8. You quote Dr. Stephen Nicholas, who set up the orphanage as an NIH clinical trial center, saying that “no child ever had an unexpected side effect” on the drugs at the ICC. The drugs in question are AZT and its analogs, Nevirapine, and protease inhibitors, including Ritonavir.
   You wrote me saying that “An unexpected side effect would have been a side effect not previously seen in response to those drugs, presumably.”
   You stated that you did not list a single FDA warning about the drugs used here because: “there are side-effects and FDA warnings on many if not most drugs. The side-effects of early AIDS drugs have been written about extensively.”
   Q7: Did you research any of the “expected side effects” of AZT and Nevirapine? Q8: Do you know why these drugs have an FDA Black-box warning?
   Q9: Why did you not report on any of the “known side effects,” in an article about the allegations that there were major side effects experienced by children at the ICC who were put on these drugs?
   Q10: If the FDA has recorded that a drug has caused permanent disability or death in adults who’ve taken it, at its normal, prescribed dose, what is the New York Times’ policy in reporting that?
9. You stated that “We did not set out to render a verdict, a decade and a half later, on the rightness or wrongness of experimental drug therapies used in the late 1980’s on children with HIV.”
   Q11: Why are you referring to the “late 1980s?”
   The ICC trials began in 1992 and continued, in various forms, through 2004 or 2005. From ICC’s webpage (as of 2004, when they took this information down): “In 1992, an outpatient clinic for HIV-positive children was established; the same year, with funding from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the clinic became a sub unit of the Columbia University Pediatric AIDS Clinical Trials Unit…”
   The page also gave a list of trials active at ICC in 1996. As for what happened in the late ’80s, I’ll refer you to their webpage once again:
   “Pediatric AIDS was first recognized in 1982-83. Early in the epidemic, HIV disease of childhood was considered to be down-hill course leading to death. But in the late 1980’s, before AZT was available, many very ill children admitted to ICC got dramatically better with proper nurturing and high-quality medical and nursing care.”
   Imagine that? Better without AZT, says ICC, in the “late 1980’s.”
   When I interviewed Dr. Katherine Painter, ICC’s medical director, in 2003, she told me that children in ICC could participate in clinical trials by being enrolled in local hospitals. From my 2003 interview with Dr. Katherine Painter (Quoted in “House that Aids Built,” 2004; in the New York Press, “Orphans on Trial”, 2004,; and reprinted with audio at http://www.aras.ab.ca/articles/icc/PainterInterview.html).
   Dr. Painter in 2003:
   “[A]nd again, many clinics that refer to us are participating in clinical trials programs.
   So if a child is on a treatment protocol, they would undergo that monitoring, testing, protocol entry, supply of an experimental drug through um, their outpatient clinic – and we can maintain that treatment here.
   So If a child is on an experimental drug, the um, clinic site supplies the drug to the child, and their caregiver of course is the one who actually picks it up, either the nursing aid who accompanies them from a store or their parent or caregiver, and brings it back, picks it back to us if, if it’s not a drug that’s available through a pharmacy.
   Currently the children who’ve been recently here who’ve been on newer therapies have been on T20 or Fuzeon, and it’s now available through a progressive access program from a pharmacy, which is Hoffman La Roche – and previously until very recently was the children who were receiving it were in an expanded access clinical protocol.”
   [end citation]
   She’s describing enrollment of ICC wards in late 2003 into clinical trials and “expanded access clinical protocols” with “experimental drugs.” The kids stay at the orphanage, and are enrolled at neighboring hospitals.
   You radically misplaced and misstated your timeline. Who knows what you were writing about in your article.
10. You say you’re not sure, or can’t remember if you interviewed ICC’s medical director. You wrote: “I do not recall interviewing Dr. Painter but I may simply not remember. As you know, the Times moved to a new office a year ago. It was not possible to move all of our files. In my case, I threw away files that were more than 12 months old.”
    Q12: Did you or did you not interview Dr. Katherine Painter?
    It’s not a difficult question. You claim to have memory of individual lines that you attribute to me, remembered from a telephone conversation from three years ago. You claim a perfect memory of these lines, despite the fact that I dispute your use of them as wildly de-contextualized misquotes. If you claim perfect memory on these, then you certainly can remember if you interviewed the medical director of the orphanage whose studies you were defending. If you can’t remember, then it should be understood that your entire memory is suspect.
11. You interviewed Mona, the great aunt and adoptive mother of two children in the ICC, but, according to her, asked her only about my “beliefs about Aids and Aids drugs,” but not about her children, or their reaction to the drugs, or their time in the ICC.
    I put this to you, and you responded:
    “As for our interview with Mona, there is no way we would have interviewed her primarily about your beliefs; there was no need to since we knew your beliefs directly from you.”
    I didn’t ask you what you “would have” interviewed her about. I asked you what you did interview her about. Mona is one of three major witnesses/sources for my first story. She says that you asked her about my “beliefs about Aids and Aids drugs, and little else,” and she does so on tape, and on the record. Q13: What “did” you ask Mona about?
12. You state that “the aim of the Times story was to explain the background, history and context of the increasingly public controversy that had arisen out of the allegations made in your article.”
    Q14: How did you plan to do that when you suppressed your interviews with all three of my major adult witnesses/sources for my first article:
    (1) Mona, the great-aunt and adoptive mother of two children who’ve been in and out of the ICC their whole lives; (2) Jackie Herger, former pediatric Aids nurse at the ICC and adoptive mother of two children from the orphanage; and (3) Dr. Katherine Painter, the medical director of ICC?
    You claim that you excised interviews from your article for reasons of space: to be able to “produce an article of a length that a newspaper can run.” But your piece ran on the front page of section one, in the Sunday edition, nation- wide. Space was not an issue.
    Q15: Why did you bury the interviews with Mona and Jackie Herger?
    Q16: Why didn’t you interview Dr. Katherine Painter? Or, if you did, why did you bury her interview?
    You cannot claim to have been looking into the allegations made in my article without interviewing or citing these three witnesses.
13. In your article, you asserted that I told you that I could not get the first story published anywhere. This assertion is contradicted by the email record of our long exchange in 2005, prior to the publication of your article.
    You grossly misquoted, misrepresented and selectively reported my telephone dialog with you, and this total misrepresentation formed the crux of your article. I’ve been interviewed elsewhere, on film, in print and on radio, and I’ve never made any statements consistent with those you attributed to me. This is because you invented them, by wildly de-contextualizing tiny portions of our over-hour long conversation.
    You committed fraud in mis-representing and mis-reporting my statements, and I said so in my letters to you at the time. I’ve been vocal about it since, in interview with other journalists, and in my own published writing, but I’ve never had a response from the Times.
    In our telephone conversation I absolutely informed you about the Left (Village Voice, Democracy Now, NPR) and the bias against critical reporting on Aids (which you’ve proven in practice), and I would swear in court to that fact. It was in that context, and that context alone, that I said that I’d had trouble finding an outlet for the “House” article in 2003. By the time you interviewed me in 2005, however, I’d had at least seven articles published on the subject, in various print and web outlets. The idea that I couldn’t get my work published was and is ludicrous.
    I’d worked at a paper in Boston prior to publishing the “House” article at Altheal.org. I’d had a great volume of work published in print and online. Your statement was intended to create an illusion that I was not a journalist or a serious investigator. It was a specious and dishonest claim on your part, and I can only assume, it’s the angle you intended from your pitch.
    I absolutely informed you that I had pulled “The House” article and research from a print magazine for the purpose of getting out faster to news agencies and the public. I have an email record stating as much.
    You asked me (June 30, 2005): “I can’t seem to find in my notes the month that you posted the Incarnation article on indymedia.org. Was it January 2004?”
    I answered (also June 30, 2005): “I researched and wrote The House That AIDS Built from June through Nov. 2003, started emailing it out in Dec. 2003. Had a magazine interested in Nov, but they backed out. Had an offer to rewrite it and get it out by Aug 2004 in a print mag, but felt speed was more important.”
    (Find those emails attached).
    You claim to be missing emails, files, etc, to have thrown items away, to have perhaps, lost items in a move. The NY Times has a century or more of archived work publicly available. If your description of your disordered and disrupted files were true, I doubt that your newspaper could function.
    Q17: Do you have a complete email record of our 2005 pre-article correspondence? If not, would you like me to email you and your editor a copy?
    Q18: What is the New York Times policy for misrepresenting someone in print?
14. You claim that you “do not recall receiving,” but may have lost in a move, or thrown out, my letter-to-the- editor from 2005.
    You wrote: “The Times moved a year ago so I no longer have a lot of older files, but I do not recall receiving your notes and am quite certain I would have responded had I received them.”
    I absolutely wrote the Times with a letter for print, immediately after the publication of your article in July, 2005. I have four sent versions in my email exchange because I sent the letter in duplicate to several NY Times email addresses, including yours, your co-writer Ms. Kaufman, and to the letters department.
    I then posted the letter publicly at GNN, (where much of my reporting has been done), as an open letter to the Times editorial and letters department, and listed the Times “letters” email, in case any reader was motivated to seek a response (”NY Times to the Rescue,” GNN, July 2005).
    My letter was then reposted at the website of the Alliance for Human Research Protection (AHRP.org), along with six additional letters from other journalists, researchers and doctors, who’d written the Times about inaccuracies and gross misreporting in your story (”Seven Unpublished letters to the New York Times Re: AIDS drug/vaccine experiments on babies/children in NYC foster care” AHRP.org, August, 2005).
    Vera Sharav’s letter was sent to Byron Calame, Public Editor New York Times, and was copied to Victor Navasky and Michael Hoyt, Columbia Journalism Review, and Ann Pincus, Center for Public Integrity: Investigative Journalism in the Public Interest. These letters have been online and publicly available for three years.
    In order for you not to have received or been made aware of these letters, you would have to have never used the internet, or have any friends who did, and also have no co-workers, or employers/editors, who receive email, use the internet, or receive feedback on their published work.
    Q19: What is the New York Times’ policy on printing letters-to-the-editor from interview subjects who make serious allegations of being mis-quoted and mis-represented in print by a Times’ reporter?
15. You claimed, in your article, that the information I provided was done through un-named sources and un- documented research.
    You wrote:
    “Most of the [ethical] questions have arisen from a single account of abuse allegations – given by a single writer about people not identified by real names, backed up with no official documentation as supporting proof, and put out on the Internet in early 2004 after the author was unable to get the story published anywhere else.
    And you concluded:
    “Whatever the outcome, the controversy has already demonstrated the power of a single person armed only with access to the Internet and an incendiary story to put major institutions on the defensive.”
    None of what you wrote is in evidence. It’s a total fabrication.
    A. I didn’t have access “only to the internet.” I took interviews with children who’d been placed in the orphanage because their parents stopped or limited FDA-Black Boxed drugs. I had access to their medical records, and, of course, to their parent’s testimonies.
    B. People were, in fact, identified by real names, in my first report, and in subsequent reporting. Jackie Herger, (former nurse at ICC and adoptive mother of children from the orphanage), and Dr. Katherine Painter (medical director of ICC) were featured in my first, second and third reports on ICC (”House that Aids Built”, “The ICC Investigation Continues”, “Orphans On Trial”), and then in subsequent reporting as well (”The ICC Interviews – Dr. Katherine Painter”, “Inside Incarnation”).
    Mona, a great aunt (and adoptive parent) of two children in the ICC, was provided an alias, as were the children in the story, and I provided her real name, and contact information to you, which you used to interview her.
    To make a claim that a story is potentially false because of the use of a single alias, is not defensible. To raise suspicions about the nature of a witness using an alias, is only defensible if the reporter is unwilling to share the identity of that alias. I provided her name and contact information for you in 2005, and you used it, interviewed her, and suppressed that information.
    C. “No official documentation.” I listed, described and gave detailed analysis to many of the three dozen studies in the National Institutes of Health Clinical Trial database (clinicaltrials.gov), and directed you to it, to do your work. I reviewed the Physician’s Desk Reference, and FDA database on the drugs used in the studies at ICC, and gave a detailed listing of the recorded side-effects of the drugs.
    D. I reviewed, listed, described and gave analysis to dozens of studies printed in the standard medical journals on the non-standardized tests and the drugs.
    E. I was able to enter the physical orphanage itself, record and report my observations of what I saw, and on several children I interacted with, whose stories I followed up with my sources.
    F. In late 2004, through 2005, I conducted face-to-face interviews with nurses and child-care workers who worked at the orphanage, and cared for the children, and reported on their daily drugging, and the vomiting and diarrhea, rashes and deformities, that occurred as the known and predictable result of the drugs; they also reported in great detail on the deaths that occurred – deaths that were very strongly tied to commencement of drugs or of certain drug regimens, or enforcement via stomach tube of new drugs, including Thalidomide.
    G. At the same time, I conducted further interviews with adolescents who’d been residents at the orphanage, and who had been held and drugged there against their will. Some of these children had developed serious illnesses, including cancer, after a childhoods spent on AZT, and its analogues, drugs which are known carcinogens.
    H. This was reported in the New York Press two weeks after your story was released (”Inside Incarnation,” NY Press, July/Aug 2005). You never did any follow-up, however, after it was revealed that your assertions couldn’t possibly have been true.
    Q20: What is the New York Times policy for committing libel against a source or journalist?
    I look forward to receiving your answers.
    Liam Scheff
    ————–attachments to this email————–
    Four emails from my 2005 email correspondence with Janny Scott, prior to the publication of her NY Times article.
    One and Two – Ms. Scott’s request and thanks for interview, Three – her follow-up question, and Four – my answer to why I put the “House” article on Indymedia and Altheal.org.
    —————————————————————————————————————–
    ONE – June 7, 2005, From: Janny Scott janscott @nytimes.com, To:liamscheff @yahoo.com; Subject: interview request
    Dear Mr. Scheff,
    I am a reporter at The New York Times and am working with Leslie Kaufman on a piece about the controversy over the testing of AIDS drugs on foster children. Would you have some time in the near future when we could speak?
    Thanks. I look forward to hearing from you.
    Janny Scott
    212 [XXX-XXXX]
    —————————————————————————————————————–
    TWO – June 13, 2005 12:43:17 PM EDT. From Janny Scott janscott @nytimes.com Date: To:liamscheff @yahoo.com Subject: my email address
    Liam, Thanks again for your time on Thursday.
    Here is my email address. I look forward to receiving whatever you send. Janny
    —————————————————————————————————————–
    THREE – June 30, 2005, From: Janny Scott janscott @nytimes.com, To: liam scheff liamscheff @yahoo.com Cc: leslie @nytimes.com Subject: date of first article?
    Hi Liam,
    I can’t seem to find in my notes the month that you posted the Incarnation article on indymedia.org. Was it January 2004?
    Please cc your answer to Leslie Kaufman as well as me, leslie@nytimes.com, as I may be out of the office. Thanks very much,
    Janny
    —————————————————————————————————————–
    FOUR – June 30, 2005. From: liam scheff liamscheff @yahoo.com To: Janny Scott janscott @nytimes.com Cc: leslie @nytimes.com Subject: Re: date of first article?
    Hi,
    I researched and wrote The House That AIDS Built from June through Nov. 2003, started emailing it out in Dec. 2003. Had a magazine interested in Nov, but they backed out.
    Had an offer to rewrite it and get it out by Aug 2004 in a print mag, but felt speed was more important. Crossed my fingers and sent it out to 50, 60 people. Put it on indymedia in Dec. 2003, the guys at altheal [Altheal.org] put it up for good in January 2004 – I think it says so at the top of the page.
    The film company contacted me in late jan or early feb.
    Doug Montero from the Post contacted me in Jan or early Feb, I still have his emails.
    He interviewed me, then put out the story w/o credit. They put my name in a day later.
    The published something a week or so ago, and credited me properly.
    Janny, drop me a line, you had some questions for me that I’ve thought about and wanted to answer better. LS
    —————-end of attachments to this email——————-
    [There has been no reply.
    This email correspondence, and the published work and research listed in the references section above, provides substantial evidence that I was misrepresented, misquoted and libeled by Janny Scott and the New York Times. Neither Ms. Scott nor her editor, Joe Sexton, has responded to this accusation, or the evidence provided herein.
    Media and legal inquiries are welcome.]

Guinea Pig Kids Continuation B – from Orphan Research and Abuse

Award-winning BBC reporter Jamie Doran breaks the wall of silence after disclosure that New York City orphans have been used as test subjects in dubious medical experiments.
Children, too sick to move or speak, lie sprawled around a playroom. Some sit in wheelchairs amid younger kids tottering aimlessly, their coordination hindered by severe brain damage. Others are deformed, their limbs twisted. Many of the little ones have tubes surgically implanted to pump milky-white fluid through holes in their stomachs. These wards of a New York City orphanage are human guinea pigs. HIV-positive and some only a few months old, they have been enrolled in toxic experiments without the consent of guardians or relatives. Many of these children were taken forcibly from their homes by decree of a seemingly benevolent municipal agency, the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS).
Most of these drug trials were co-sponsored by giant pharmaceutical companies and the National Institute of Health (NIH). In conjunction with the ACS, hospital administrators, doctors and their subordinates helped to carry out the experiments, which apparently led to severe injury, deformation, brain damage and even death for some of the subjects.
In New York City more than 23,000 children are either in foster care or independent homes supervised by religious organizations on behalf of the local authorities. Most of these kids are black or Hispanic. Some are born addicted to crack; others are HIV-positive. For more than a decade, the ACS admits, 465 children have been forced to receive dubious experimental cocktails provided by such pharmaceutical firms as Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb, MicroGeneSys, Biocine, Glaxo Wellcome and Pfizer.
There have been allegations that these clinical trials have killed children. What is certain is that most of the experiments were cruel and unnecessary.
“They tested these very highly experimental drugs, Phase 1 and Phase 2,” says Vera Sharav of the Alliance for Human Research Protection. “Why didn’t they provide the children with the current best treatment? That’s the question I have. Why did they expose them to risk and pain when they were helpless? Would they have done those experiments with their own children? I doubt it.”
In studies conducted under the auspices of the foster-care system, children were administered multiple concoctions simultaneously, at up to eight times the usual doses. No one seemed terribly concerned what effects AZT, Nevirapine and vaccines for herpes and chicken pox would have on the kids.
“We’re talking about serious, serious side effects,” says Dr. David Rasnick, a visiting scholar at the University of California at Berkeley, who specializes in AIDS research. “These children are going to be absolutely miserable… they’re going to have cramps and diarrhea, and their joints are going to swell up. They’re going to roll around the ground, and you can’t touch them.”
Rasnick describes some of the drugs administered in the experiments as “lethal.” For example, Nevirapine can cause severe liver toxicity. Another potential side effect is Steven Johnsons Syndrome, which is characterized by painful flaking of the skin.
Government documentation (available at ClinicalTrials.gov) lists some of the experiments carried out on children. One involved a herpes treatment; another gave subjects double doses of a measles vaccine. One trial involved

administering cocktails of drugs with side effects that included severe abdominal pain, muscle wastage and organ failure. How could this happen in America?
ince the 1980s, activists have been pressuring the government to rush new AIDS drugs onto the market. Since then, Liam Scheff maintains, the relationship between the NIH, FDA and drug companies has grown incestuous.
Scheff, the investigative reporter who originally broke this story and brought it to the BBC, claims that drug companies were motivated to co-sponsor orphan drug studies with the NIH “to keep old, failed drugs like AZT on the market.”
“When a profitable drug fails in one population,” Scheff explains, “its manufacturer will try to find a use for it in another. With AIDS drugs, they’ve dumped drugs that harmed and even killed adult males into pregnant women and their children.”
“A drug company only has to alter a drug slightly, or simply change its name,” he continues, “to be able to claim a new use. They run it through new clinical trials co-sponsored by the NIH, a taxpayer-funded government agency. As such, the NIH publishes lots of data and claims it’s fighting the war on AIDS, which justifies its growing budget. Conversely, drug companies get to run their old, failed drugs through new trials subsidized by taxpayers. It’s a win-win situation. The only losers are orphans.”
The NIH will partner with a hospital and a government-sponsored foster-care system. Suddenly, they have an endless supply of subjects on which to test-sick youngsters with no guardians.
“You would not expect too many parents to volunteer their children for such experiments,” says the Alliance for Human Research Protection’s Vera Sharav. “This means that if the researchers want to do the experiments on children, they are going to look for vulnerable children whom they can get. And when you have a city government agency accommodating them, that is the biggest betrayal of those children. They don’t have anyone but the city agency that is their guardian on paper.”
And how can anyone believe that drugs proven devastatingly toxic in adults might benefit infants or children?
“When asked by a reporter or a city councilperson, the doctors will say they’re offering the most advanced treatment to these kids,” Scheff says. “That’s not true. If you review the specific drugs used in the studies, it becomes obvious that that’s totally contradictory.” Scheff goes on to explain why the NIH and the FDA don’t restrain the drug companies: “The NIH and the FDA are the drug companies. It’s unclear anymore where one stops and another begins. It’s the same if I say that General Dynamics and Raytheon are the Department of Defense. The NIH is an organization that works as a liaison between the drug companies and the public they too often pretend to serve. The job of the NIH is to keep drug companies in business, and less and less to serve the public.”
eople do things for a reason, good or bad,” says 15-year-old Carlos (not his real name), who was reluctant to be interviewed. “We have to forgive them for what they do.” Soon after being born to an HIV-positive mother, Carlos was sent to the Incarnation Children’s Center-a New York City nursing facility for children and adolescents with HIV or AIDS-and has spent most of his life in foster-care facilities.
From a distance, Carlos looks like a typical urban teenager: reversed baseball cap, bomber jacket hanging off his shoulders and baggy jeans. On close examination, his frailty is starkly apparent. The youth stands 5-foot-10, but his arms and legs are so thin, they appear as if they’d snap at the slightest touch. His eyes are sallow, sunken and better fitted for a man 50 years older.
Today, Carlos lives in Harlem with his aunt, a teacher. She was frightened that if the ACS heard that he’d spoken to the press, the boy could be taken away from her and put back on the experiments once again.
It was around ten years ago that Carlos had been removed from his family after their refusal to continue administering drugs at home, because they were making him ill. Twice he’d ended up on life-support.
But the ACS knew best. Carlos was placed in a children’s home, which had become a virtual conveyor belt of sick kids on which doctors could test new drugs. He was perfect: Not only was the boy black, poor and HIV- positive, but also his family couldn’t afford a private attorney. Having taken him into its care, the ACS became his official guardian. Incarnation Children’s Center is under the jurisdiction of the Archdiocese of New York’s Catholic

Charities. The Center is housed in a refurbished convent in upper Manhattan. In 1992, Incarnation partnered with nearby New York-Presbyterian Hospital and became a testing ground for clinical drug trials.
Since the late 1990s, children have been used in experiments. If a child refused to take a given medication, he or she was force-fed through a tube surgically inserted into the stomach. Both Incarnation Children’s Center and its public-relations firm refused to comment about activities within the facility. acklyn Hoerger was a pediatric nurse at Incarnation for more than five years. She says doctors there insistent that any of the children’s pain or suffering had nothing to do with the experimental drugs. “At the time, it did not occur to me that anything was wrong,” Hoerger recalls. “If they were vomiting, if they lost their ability to walk, if they were having diarrhea, if they were dying, then all of this was because of their HIV infection.”
Hoerger changed her mind after she and her husband had adopted two little girls from the home. Despite receiving the utmost care and attention, their conditions continued to deteriorate.
“I gave them good-quality food,” Hoerger says, “and the best private schooling they could get, occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech therapy and tutoring, the best psychologist that I could find on all levels, and I just didn’t seem to be making any headway. The only thing that was left was the medication that I was giving them.” Hoerger took the children off the drug regime and, almost immediately, their health and happiness visibly improved. For the first time they were able to go swimming and cycling. Both the kids’ social worker and mental- health visitor were delighted. But when the ACS discovered that their mother had stopped administering the girls’ medications, there was a knock on the door.
“It was a Saturday morning,” Hoerger says, “and they had come a few times unannounced. So when I saw them at the door, I invited them in, and they said that this wasn’t a happy visit. And at that point they told me that they were taking the children away. I was in shock; I couldn’t believe it.”
For refusing to administer drugs, Jacklyn Hoerger lost the children and was also convicted of child abuse. Four years later she still has no idea what happened to the girls she’d grown to love. According to records, more than 50 children in 13 experiments from Incarnation were offered up for experiments. An unknown number of others came from foster homes and other children’s facilities under the supervision of the ACS, which was granted far- reaching powers in the 1990s by then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. After a particularly horrific child-abuse case, literally thousands of children were effectively rounded up and placed in foster care.
“They’re essentially out of control,” says David Lansner, a family lawyer in New York. “I’ve had many ACS case workers tell me, ‘We’re ACS. We can do whatever we want.’ And they usually get away with it.”
Inexplicably in 2002, the trials at Incarnation suddenly stopped. But documentation shows that similar experiments continue at up to six other locations in New York City’s metropolitan area.
According to the New York Post, the state Health Department has launched an investigation. Also, the ACS itself has agreed to hire an independent research firm to look into the allegations. The agency reports it will form a panel of national health-care experts to review the findings.
“We do know that several [children] passed away during the course of these experiments, and we do know that some are still involved,” says Bill Perkins, the New York City Council’s deputy majority leader. “And there is somewhat of a secrecy about the whole thing, I must say. It has not been easy to get through the bureaucracy as to exactly what this is all about.”
Others believe that the damage is already obvious. “They were just experimenting, like you had a bunch of lab rats, an unending supply,” says AIDS researcher David Rasnick. “You had subjects, you had drugs, and you were just experimenting, throwing things around.”
Liam Scheff, who has written numerous articles on AIDS and related topics, contributed to this report.

Continuation A- from Article No. 1

Current research findings… in progross: The ICC Investigation – Deaths in Studies with NYC Orphans – AHRP

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-109hhrg36660/html/CHRG-109hhrg36660.htm