SMH… Somebody has to protect these kids.

Government-funded researchers tested AIDS drugs on hundreds of foster children over the past two decades, often without providing them a basic protection afforded in federal law and required by some states, an Associated Press review has found.

The research funded by the National Institutes of Health spanned the country. It was most widespread in the 1990s as foster care agencies sought treatments for their HIV-infected children that weren’t yet available in the marketplace.

The practice ensured that foster children — mostly poor or minority — received care from world-class researchers at government expense, slowing their rate of death and extending their lives. But it also exposed a vulnerable population to the risks of medical research and drugs that were known to have serious side effects in adults and for which the safety for children was unknown.

The research was conducted in at least seven states — Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Colorado and Texas — and involved more than four dozen different studies. The foster children ranged from infants to late teens, according to interviews and government records.

Several studies that enlisted foster children reported patients suffered side effects such as rashes, vomiting and sharp drops in infection-fighting blood cells as they tested antiretroviral drugs to suppress AIDS or other medicines to treat secondary infections.

In one study, researchers reported a “disturbing” higher death rate among children who took higher doses of a drug. That study was unable to determine a safe and effective dosage.

The government provided special protections for child wards in 1983. They required researchers and their oversight boards to appoint independent advocates for any foster child enrolled in a narrow class of studies that involved greater than minimal risk and lacked the promise of direct benefit. Some foster agencies required the protection regardless of risks and benefits.

Advocates must be independent of the foster care and research agencies, have some understanding of medical issues and “act in the best interests of the child” for the entirety of the research, the law states.

However, researchers and foster agencies told AP that foster children in AIDS drug trials often weren’t given such advocates even though research institutions many times promised to do so to gain access to the children.

Illinois officials believe none of their nearly 200 foster children in AIDS studies got independent monitors even though researchers signed a document guaranteeing “the appointment of an advocate for each individual ward participating in the respective medical research.”

New York City could find records showing 142 — less than a third — of the 465 foster children in AIDS drug trials got such monitors even though city policy required them. The city has asked an outside firm to investigate.

Likewise, research facilities including Chicago’s Children’s Memorial Hospital and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore said they concluded they didn’t provide advocates for foster kids.

Some states declined to participate in medical experiments. Tennessee said its foster care rules generally prohibit enlisting children in such trials. California requires a judge’s order. And Wisconsin “has absolutely never allowed, nor would we even consider, any clinical experiments with the children in our foster care system,” spokeswoman Stephanie Marquis said.

Officials estimated that 5 percent to 10 percent of the 13,878 children enrolled in pediatric AIDS studies funded by NIH since the late 1980s were in foster care. More than two dozen Illinois foster children remain in studies today.

Some foster children died during studies, but state or city agencies said they could find no records that any deaths were directly caused by experimental treatments.

We can understand wanting the kids to get the best care but we don’t need what happened in Tuskegee to ever happen again.

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Give us, us free! More than 300,000 citizens have had it with America’s janky azz government. They have declared themselves “sovereign citizens” and they refuse to carry drivers licenses, don’t register the birth of their children or recognize the court system.

As many as 300,000 people identify as sovereign citizens, the Southern Poverty Law Center found in a study to be published Thursday that was obtained by The Associated Press. Hate group monitors say their numbers have increased thanks to the recession, the foreclosure crisis, the growth of the Internet and the election of Barack Obama in 2008.

Adherents expect the current American system of government to end one way or another.

“I’m the Patrick Henry of the 21st century. I’m here to regain our freedom,” James McBride said in a jailhouse interview. “I’m going to, or die trying.”

At the heart of their belief system: The government creates a secret identity for each citizen at birth, a “straw man,” that controls an account at the U.S. Treasury used as collateral for foreign debt. File enough documents at the right offices and the money in those accounts can be used to pay off debt or make purchases worth thousands of dollars.

Jim Jarvis, Ohio coordinator for the Restore America Plan, believes the country has lacked a legitimate government since Congress failed to adjourn properly in 1861.

The people who are crazy, he says, are those who won’t do the research to find out what’s really going on in the country.

The sovereign citizen movement has grown to about 100,000 hard-core believers, the SPLC report estimates, and 200,000 people trying out the theories by “resisting everything from speeding tickets to drug charges.”

Many of these “free” citizens refer to themselves as “Fourteen Amendment Citizens.” They believe the 14th Amendment created a new class of people who had no constitutional rights but were instead slaves to the government, according to Mark Pitcavage, investigative researcher for the Anti-Defamation League.

Y’all see how they have “hate group monitors” studying how people move. (Shifty side eye) Oh well, keep fighting the good fight. We always say: ‘Tis better to die on your feet, than live on your knees.

Source

Fidel Castro plans to issue a warning in an upcoming TV appearance. Pop it to see why he believes the US Government is involved in a “sinister” plot to take over the world and how he thinks they’ll do it.

Fidel Castro has been a vocal opponent of the US for a long time. And at 83-years-old, it doesn’t look like it’s about to stop. He plans to appear on tv and radio to warn the public about the “empire’s” (United States) intentions to destroy the world.

Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who has lived in seclusion since falling ill four years ago, will appear on Cuban television and radio on Monday evening to discuss his theory that the world is on the verge of nuclear war, the Communist Party newspaper Granma said in its Monday online edition.

The appearance will mark the second time in less than a week that the suddenly resurgent 83-year-old has made a public appearance, after staying out of view, except in occasional photographs and videos, since undergoing emergency intestinal surgery in July 2006.

Castro writes opinion columns, or “Reflections,” for Cuba’s state-run media that in recent weeks have focused on his prediction that nuclear war will soon break out, sparked by a conflict between the United States and Iran over international sanctions against Iran’s nuclear activities.

“The empire is at the point of committing a terrible error that nobody can stop. It advances inexorably toward a sinister fate,” he wrote on July 5.

The “empire” is how Castro usually refers to the United States, his bitter foe from the time he took power in Cuba in a 1959 revolution.

In a column published on Sunday night, Castro said the “principal purpose” of his writings has been to “warn international public opinion of what was occurring.”

He said he has reached his dire conclusion based in part on “observing what happened, as the political leader that I was during many years, confronting the empire, its blockades and its unspeakable crimes.”

Castro promised to continue his lonely fight to warn the world of the coming disaster.”I don’t hesitate in running risks of compromising my modest moral authority,” he wrote on Sunday. “I will continue writing ‘Reflections’ about the topic.”

We don’t know about this one. Fidel been mobbin’ on the US for a long time. But you know what they say about rumors that never go away.

Source

Facebook tells them who you know, Google Maps tells them where you are and now new laws will help them find out exactly what you’re doing. Check out how the government plans to violate your privacy this week.

According to Faux News Fox News, The Department of Homeland Security claims that the internet has become a haven for potential terrorists and the only way to stop them is to spy on you.

Fighting homegrown terrorism by monitoring Internet communications is a civil liberties trade-off the U.S. government must make to beef up national security, the nation’s homeland security chief said Friday.

As terrorists increasingly recruit U.S. citizens, the government needs to constantly balance Americans’ civil rights and privacy with the need to keep people safe, said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

But finding that balance has become more complex as homegrown terrorists have used the Internet to reach out to extremists abroad for inspiration and training. Those contacts have spurred a recent rash of U.S.-based terror plots and incidents.

“The First Amendment protects radical opinions, but we need the legal tools to do things like monitor the recruitment of terrorists via the Internet,” Napolitano told a gathering of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy.

The administration has faced a number of civil liberties and privacy challenges in recent months as it has tried to increase airport security by adding full-body scanners, or track suspected terrorists traveling into the United States from other countries.

“Her speech is sign of the maturing of the administration on this issue,” said Stewart Baker, former undersecretary for policy with the Department of Homeland Security. “They now appreciate the risks and the trade-offs much more clearly than when they first arrived, and to their credit, they’ve adjusted their preconceptions.”

Underscoring her comments are a number of recent terror attacks over the past year where legal U.S. residents such as Times Square bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad and accused Fort Hood, Texas, shooter Maj. Nidal Hasan, are believed to have been inspired by the Internet postings of violent Islamic extremists.

And the fact that these are U.S. citizens or legal residents raises many legal and constitutional questions.

Napolitano said it is wrong to believe that if security is embraced, liberty is sacrificed.

She added, “We can significantly advance security without having a deleterious impact on individual rights in most instances. At the same time, there are situations where trade-offs are inevitable.”

Don’t get it twisted. We’re all for homeland security, but somebody needs to specify where they plan to look for these ‘terrorists.’ Cuz if they’re looking here, we got two words for them: ____ You!

Source

According to a recent poll, Americans feel that “something just ain’t right” with the US system of government:

Americans overwhelmingly believe that the government is broken, according to a national poll released Sunday. But the CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey also indicates that the public overwhelmingly holds out hope that what’s broken can be fixed.

Eighty-six percent of people questioned say that the system of government is broken, with 14 percent saying no. Of the 86 percent, 81 percent say that the government can be fixed, but 5 percent say it’s beyond repair. The percentage of Americans who believe the government is broken has increased by eight points since 2006.

“That increase is highest among higher-income Americans and people who live in rural areas,” said Keating Holland, CNN polling director. “Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but those are the groups that make up the bulk of the Tea Party activists today.”

The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll was conducted February 12-15, with 1,023 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey’s sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Thoughts??

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There is no doubt that Hurricane Katrina was a storm of colossal proportions, a rarity even in the current climate of super-charged storm fronts, but it is the ruling of a judge that has given a target for all of those effected by the damage left in its wake.

In a monumental ruling, U.S. District Judge Stanwood R. Duval declared that the government, via negligence on the part of the Army Corp of Engineers, is directly responsible for many of the issues that people encountered after the winds settled. Continue…