Guinea Pig Kids http://www.guineapigkids.com/ 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. http://www.guineapigkids.com
