Human Experiments: A Chronology of Human Research

by Vera Hassner Shara


6th century B.C.: Meat and vegetable experiment on young Jewish prisoners in Book of Daniel.

5th century B.C: "Primum non nocere" ("First do no harm"), medical ethics standard attributed to Hippocrates. This Oath became obligatory for physicians prior to practicing medicine in the 4th century AD

1st century B.C. Cleopatra devised an experiment to test the accuracy of the theory that it takes 40 days to fashion a male fetus fully and 80 days to fashion a female fetus. When her handmaids were sentenced to death under government order, Cleopatra had them impregnated and subjected them to subsequent operations to open their wombs at specific times of gestation. [http://www.jlaw.com/Articles/NaziMedExNotes.html#1]

12th century: Rabbi and physician Maimonides' Prayer: "May I never see in the patient anything but a fellow creature in pain."

1796 Edward Jenner injects healthy eight-year-old James Phillips first with cowpox then three months later with smallpox and is hailed as discoverer of smallpox vaccine.

1845-1849: J. Marion Sims, "the father of gynecology" performed multiple experimental surgeries on enslaved African women without the benefit of anesthesia. After suffering unimaginable pain, many lost their lives to infection. One woman was made to endure 34 experimental operations for a prolapsed uterus. http://www.coax.net/people/lwf/jm_sims.htm

1865: French physiologist Claude Bernard publishes "Introduction to the Study of Human Experimentation," advising: "Never perform an experiment which might be harmful to the patient even though highly advantageous to science or the health of others."

1896: Dr. Arthur Wentworth performed spinal taps on 29 children at Children's Hospital, Boston, to determine if the procedure was harmful. Dr. John Roberts of Philadelphia, noting the non-therapeutic indication, labeled Wentworth's procedures "human vivisection."

1897: Italian bacteriologist Sanarelli injects five subjects with bacillus searching for a causative agent for yellow fever.

1900: Walter Reed injects 22 Spanish immigrant workers in Cuba with the agent for yellow fever paying them $100 if they survive and $200 if they contract the disease. 

1900: Berlin Code of Ethics. Royal Prussian Minister of Religion, Education, and Medical Affairs guaranteed that: "all medical interventions for other than diagnostic, healing, and immunization purposes, regardless of other legal or moral authorization are excluded under all circumstances if (1) the human subject is a minor or not competent due to other reasons; (2) the human subject has not given his unambiguous consent; (3) the consent is not preceded by a proper explanation of the possible negative consequences of the intervention."http://www.geocities.com/artnscience/00berlincode.pdf

1906: Dr. Richard Strong, a professor of tropical medicine at Harvard, experiments with cholera on prisoners in the Philippines killing thirteen.

1913: Pennsylvania House of Representatives recorded that 146 children had been inoculated with syphilis, "through the courtesy of the various hospitals" and that 15 children in St. Vincent's House in Philadelphia had had their eyes tested with tuberculin. Several of these children became permanently blind. The experimenters were not punished.

1915: A doctor in Mississippi, working for the U.S. Public Health Office produces Pellagra in twelve Mississippi inmates in an attempt to discover a cure for the disease

1919-1922: Testicular transplant experiments on five hundred prisoners at San Quentin.

1927: Carrie Buck of Charlottesville is legally sterilized against her will at the Virginia Colony Home for the Mentally Infirm. Carrie Buck was the mentally normal daughter of a mentally retarded mother, but under the Virginia law, she was declared potentially capable of having a "less than normal child." By the 1930s, seventeen states in the U.S. have laws permitting forced sterilization.  The settlement of Poe v. Lynchburg Training School and Hospital (same institution, different name) in 1981 brought to an end the Virginia law. It is estimated that as many as 10,000 perfectly normal women were forcibly sterilized for "legal" reasons including alcoholism, prostitution, and criminal behavior in general.

1931: Lubeck, Germany, 75 children die in from pediatrician's experiment with tuberculosis vaccine.  

Germany adopts "Regulation on New Therapy and Experimentation" requiring all human experiments to be preceded by animal experiments. This law remained in effect during the Nazi regime.

1931: Dr. Cornelius Rhoads, a pathologist, conducted a cancer experiment in Puerto Rico under the auspices of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Investigations. Dr. Rhoads has been accused of purposely infecting his Puerto Rican subjects with cancer cells. Thirteen of the subjects died. A Puerto Rican physician uncovered the experiment an investigation covered-up the facts. Despite Rhoads' hand written statements that the Puerto Rican population should be eradicated, Rhoads went on to establish U.S. Army Biological Warfare facilities in Maryland, Utah, and Panama, and was later named to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. Rhoads was also responsible for the radiation experiments on prisoners, hospital patients, and soldiers. The American Association for Cancer Research honored him by naming its exemplary scientist award the Cornelius Rhoads Award.

1932-1972: U.S. Public Health Service study in Tuskegee, Alabama of more than 400 black sharecroppers observed for the natural course of untreated syphilis.

1932: Japanese troops invade Manchuria. Dr. Shiro Ishii, a prominent physician and army officer begins preliminary germ warfare experiments. 

1936: Japan's Wartime Human Biowarfare Experimentation Program.

1938: Japan establishes Unit 731 in Pingfan, 25 km. from Harbin. Unit 731, a biological-warfare unit disguised as a water-purification unit, is formed outside the city of Harbin.

1939: Third Reich orders births of all twins be registered with Public Health Offices for purpose of genetic research.  [[One twin experimented on, the other twin used as a genetic “control”. -- DNI]]

1939: Twenty-two children living at the Iowa Soldiers' Orphans' Home in Davenport were the subjects of the "monster" experiment that used psychological pressure to induce children who spoke normally to stutter. It was designed by one of the nation's most prominent speech pathologists, Dr. Wendell Johnson, to test his theory on the cause of stuttering.

1940: Poisonous gas experiments at Unit 731 (Japan). One experiment conducted September 7-10, 1940, on 16 Chinese prisoners who were exposed to mustard gas in a simulated battle situation.

1940-1941: Unit 731 (Japan) used aircraft to spread cotton and rice husks contaminated with the black plague at Changde and Ningbo, in central China. About 100 people died from the black plague in Ningbo as a result.

1940's: In a crash program to develop new drugs to fight Malaria during World War II, doctors in the Chicago area infected nearly 400 prisoners with the disease. Although the Chicago inmates were given general information that they were helping with the war effort, they were not informed about the nature of the experiment. Nazi doctors on trial at Nuremberg cited the Chicago studies as precedents to defend their own research aimed at aiding the German war effort.

1941: Sterilization experiments at Auschwitz.

1941-1945: Typhus experiments at Buchenwald and Natzweiler concentration camps.

1941: Dr. William c. Black inoculated a twelve month old baby with herpes. He was criticized by Francis Payton Rous, editor of the Journal of Experimental Medicine, who called it "an abuse of power, an infringement of the rights of an individual, and not excusable because the illness which followed had implications for science." Dr. Rous rejected outright the fact that the child had been "offered as a volunteer."

1942 - 1945: Unit 731 (Japan). Ishii begins "field tests" of germ warfare and vivisection experiments on thousands of Chinese soldiers and civilians. Chinese people who rebelled against the Japanese occupation were arrested and sent to Pingfan where they became human guinea pigs; there is evidence that some Russian prisoners were also victims of medical atrocities. "I cut him open from the chest to the stomach and he screamed terribly and his face was all twisted in agony. He made this unimaginable sound, he was screaming so horribly. But then finally he stopped. This was all in a day's work for the surgeons, but it really left an impression on me because it was my first time." - NYT

These prisoners were called 'maruta' (literally 'logs') by the Japanese. After succumbing to induced diseases - including bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax - the prisoners were usually dissected while still alive, their bodies then cremated within the compound. Tens of thousands died. The atrocities were committed by some of Japan's most distinguished doctors recruited by Dr. Ishii.

1942: High altitude or low pressure experiments at Dachau concentration camp.

1942: Harvard biochemist Edward Cohn injects sixty-four Massachusetts prisoners with beef blood in U.S. Navy-sponsored experiment.

1942: Japanese sprayed cholera, typhoid, plague, and dysentery pathogens in the Jinhua area of Zhejian province (China). A large number of Japanese soldiers also fell victim to the sprayed diseases.

1942-1943: Bone regeneration and transplantation experiments on female prisoners at Ravensbrueck concentration camp.

1942-1943: Freezing experiments at Dachau concentration camp.

1943 Refrigeration experiment conducted on sixteen mentally disabled patients who were placed in refrigerated cabinets at 30 degree Farenheit, for 120 hours, at University of Cincinnati Hospital., "to study the effect of frigid temperature on mental disorders."

1942-1943: Coagulation experiments on Catholic priests at Dachau concentration camp.

1942-1944: U.S. Chemical Warfare Service conducts mustard gas experiments on thousands of servicemen.

1942-1945: Malaria experiments at Dachau concentration camp on more than twelve hundred prisoners.

1943: Epidemic jaundice experiments at Natzweiler concentration camp.

1943-1944: Phosphorus burn experiments at Buchenwald concentration camp.

1944: Manhattan Project injection of 4.7 micrograms of plutonium into soldiers at Oak Ridge, TN.

1944: Seawater experiment on sixty Gypsies who were given only saltwater to drink at Dachau concentration camp.

1944-1946: University of Chicago Medical School professor Dr. Alf Alving conducts malaria experiments on more than 400 Illinois prisoners.

1945: Manhattan Project injection of plutonium into three patients at Billings Hospital at University of Chicago.

1945: Malaria experiment on 800 prisoners in Atlanta.

1946: Opening of Nuremberg Doctors Trial by U.S. Military Tribunal.

1945: Japanese troops blow up the headquarters of Unit 731 in final days of Pacific war. Ishii orders 150 remaining ''logs'' (i.e., human beings) killed to cover up their experimentation. Gen. Douglas MacArthur is named commander of the Allied powers in Japan.

1946: U.S. secret deal with Ishii and Unit 731 leaders cover up of germ warfare data based on human experimentation in exchange for immunity from war-crimes prosecution.

1946-1953: Atomic Energy Commission sponsored study conducted at the Fernald school in Massachusetts. Residents were fed Quaker Oats breakfast cereal containing radioactive tracers.

1946: Patients in VA hospitals are used as guinea pigs for medical experiments. In order to allay suspicions, the order is given to change the word "experiments" to "investigations" or "observations" whenever reporting a medical study performed in one of the nation's veteran's hospitals.

1947: Colonel E.E. Kirkpatrick of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission issues a secret document (Document 07075001, January 8, 1947) stating that the agency will begin administering intravenous doses of radioactive substances to human subjects.

1947: The CIA begins its study of LSD as a potential weapon for use by American intelligence. Human subjects (both civilian and military) are used with and without their knowledge.

1947: Judgment at Nuremberg Doctors Trial sets forth "Permissible Medical Experiments" i.e., the Nuremberg Code, which begins: "The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential."

1949: Intentional release of radiodine 131 and xenon 133 over Hanford Washington in Atomic Energy Commission field study called "Green Run."

1949: Soviet Union's war crimes trial of Dr. Ishii's associates (Japan).

1949-1953: Atomic Energy Commission studies of mentally disabled school children fed radioactive isotopes at Fernald and Wrentham schools.

1940s-1950s: "psychic driving" and "mental departterning" experiments conducted by Dr. Ewen Cameron, depriving patients of sleep, using massive ECT combined with psychoactive drugs such as, LSD. After his "treatments" patients were unable to function. In the 1950's Dr.Cameron's experiments were sponsored by the CIA.

1950: Dr. Joseph Stokes of the University of Pennsylvania infects 200 women prisoners with viral hepatitis.

1950: U.S. Army secretly used a Navy ship outside the Golden Gate to spray supposedly harmless bacteria over San Francisco and its outskirts. Eleven people were sickened by the germs, and one of them died.

1951-1960: University of Pennsylvania under contract with U.S. Army conducts psychopharmacological experiments on hundreds of Pennsylvania prisoners.

1952-1974: University of Pennsylvania dermatologist Dr. Albert Kligman conducts skin product experiments by the hundreds at Holmesburg Prison; "All I saw before me," he has said about his first visit to the prison, "were acres of skin."

1952: Henry Blauer injected with a fatal dose of mescaline at New York State Psychiatric Institute of Columbia University. U.S. Department of Defense, the sponsor, conspired to conceal evidence for 23 years.

1953 Newborn Daniel Burton rendered blind at Brooklyn Doctor's Hospital due to high oxygen study on RLF.

1953-1957: Oak Ridge (TN)-sponsored injection of uranium into eleven patients at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

1953-1960: CIA brainwashing experiments with LSD at eighty institutions on hundreds of subjects in a project code named "MK-ULTRA."

1953-1970: U.S. Army experiments with LSD on soldiers at Fort Detrick, Md.

1954-1974: U.S. Army study of 2,300 Seventh-Day Adventist soldiers in 157 experiments code named "Operation Whitecoat."

1950s - 1972: Mentally disabled children at Willowbrook School (NY) were deliberately infected with hepatitis in an attempt to find a vaccine. Participation in the study was a condition for admission to institution.

1956: Dr. Albert Sabin tests experimental polio vaccine on 133 prisoners in Ohio.

1958-1962: Spread of radioactive materials over Inupiat land in Point Hope, Alaska in Atomic Energy Commission field study code named "Project Chariot."

1962: Thalidomide withdrawn from the market after thousands of birth deformities blamed in part on misleading results of animal studies; the FDA thereafter requires three phases of human clinical trials before a drug can be approved for the market.

1962 to 1966, a total of 33 pharmaceutical companies tested 153 experimental drugs at Holmesburg prison (PA) alone.

1962-1980 Pharmaceutical companies conduct phase I safety testing of drugs almost exclusively on prisoners for small cash payments.

1962: Injection of live cancer cells into 22 elderly patients at Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital in Brooklyn. Administration covered up, NYS licensing board placed the principal investigator on probation for one year. Two years later, American Cancer Society elected him Vice President.

1962: Stanley Milgram conducts obedience research at Yale University.

1963: NIH supported researcher transplants chimpanzee kidney into human in failed experiment.

1963-1973: Dr. Carl Heller, a leading endocrinologist, conducts testicular irradiation experiments on prisoners in Oregon and Washington giving them $5 a month and $100 when they receive a vasectomy at the end of the trial.

1964: World Medical Association adopts Helsinki Declaration, asserting "The interests of science and society should never take precedence over the well being of the subject."

 1965-1966: University of Pennsylvania under contract with Dow Chemical conducts dioxin experiments on prisoners at Holmesburg.

 1966: Henry Beecher's article "Ethics and Clinical Research" in New England Journal of Medicine.

 1966: U.S. Army introduces bacillus globigii into New York subway tunnels in field study.

 1966: NIH Office for Protection of Research Subjects ("OPRR") created and issues Policies for the Protection of Human Subjects calling for establishment of independent review bodies later known as Institutional Review Boards.

1967: British physician M.H. Pappworth publishes "Human Guinea Pigs," advising "No doctor has the right to choose martyrs for science or for the general good."

1969: Judge Sam Steinfield's eloquent dissent in Strunk v. Strunk, 445 S.W.2d 145, the first judicial suggestion that the Nuremberg Code should influence American jurisprudence.

1969. Milledgeville Georgia, investigational drugs tested on mentally disabled children. No institutional approval.

1969: San Antonio Contraceptive Study conducted on 70 poor Mexican-American women. Half received oral contraceptives the other placebo. No informed consent.

1973 Ad Hoc Advisory Panel issues Final Report of Tuskegee Syphilis Study, concluding "Society can no longer afford to leave the balancing of individual rights against scientific progress to the scientific community."

1974: National Research Act establishes National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects and requires Public Health Service to promulgate regulations for the protection of human subjects.  [[The NRA also mandated that then-Secretary of DHHS Casper Weinburger appoint a committee to determine the 'ethical principles the US government should use in dealing with the use of human subjects in research.  Thus the National Commission was established in 1975, consisting of 11 appointed members, only one (Art Caplan) with a Ph.D. in philosophy (ethics is a subfield of philosophy). (Caplan is now on the Board of Trustees of the transhumanist Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET)). In 1978/9 the National Commission submitted its Belmont Report -- the formal 'birth of bioethics' -- denoting three ethical principles:  respect for persons (which was rapidly replaced by autonomy), justice and beneficence (all oddly defined).  The NRA also mandated that the Belmont Report be incorporated on the first page of the revised OPRR federal regulations (now OHRP), done in 1981.  In those OPRR federal regulations, the 'human embryo' is nowhere defined as a 'subject of research' or otherwise -- thus legally does not exist.  Two false scientific definitions are incorporated into those OPRR regulations:  both 'pregnancy and fetus' are mis-defined as 'beginning at implantation'.  Real natural normal pregnancy begins at fertilization in the woman's fallopian tube (not in her uterus), and the 'fetal period' doesn't really begin until the beginning of 9 weeks post-fertilization. Thus theoretically,  according to these federal regulations (still operative as the OHRP regulations), abortions, the use of abortifacients, human embryo flushing, research on all human embryos in vitro in IVF/ART facilities can be 'legally' performed through 8 weeks post-fertilization. The USCCB official who inserted these two false scientific definitions was Richard Doerflinger. Of course, these federal regulations would also allow for all the genetic engineering (including synthetic biology and nanotechnology) of human embryos -- in vivo or in vitro -- so popular today.  -- DNI]]

1975: The Department of Health, Education and Welfare (DHEW) raised NIH's 1966 Policies for the Protection of Human subjects to regulatory status. Title 45 of the Code of Federal Regulations, known as "The Common Rule," requires the appointment and utilization of institutional review boards (IRBs).

1976: National Urban League holds National Conference on Human Experimentation, announcing "We don't want to kill science but we don't want science to kill, mangle and abuse us."

1978: Experimental Hepatitis B vaccine trials, conducted by the CDC, begin in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Ads for research subjects specifically ask for promiscuous homosexual men.

1979: National Commission issues Belmont Report setting forth three basic ethical principles: respect for persons, beneficence, and justice.

1980: The FDA promulgates 21 CFR 50.44 prohibiting use of prisoners as subjects in clinical trials shifting phase I testing by pharmaceutical companies to non-prison population.

1981: Leonard Whitlock suffers permanent brain damage after deep diving experiment at Duke University.

1986: Congressional subcommittee holds one-day hearing in Washington, called by Rep. Pat Williams of Montana, aimed at determining whether U.S. prisoners of war in Manchuria were victims of germ-warfare experimentation. Hearing is inconclusive.

1981-1996: Protocol 126 at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle.

1987: Supreme Court decision in United States v. Stanley, 483 U.S. 669, holding soldier given LSD without his consent could not sue U.S. Army for damages.

1987:" L-dopa challenge and relapse" experiment conducted on 28 U.S. veterans who were subjected to psychotic relapse for study purposes at the Bronx VA.

1990: The FDA grants Department of Defense waiver of Nuremberg Code for use of unapproved drugs and vaccines in Desert Shield.

1991: World Health Organization announces CIOMS Guidelines which set forth four ethical principles: respect for persons, beneficence, nonmaleficence and justice.

1991: Tony LaMadrid commits suicide after participating in study on relapse of schizophrenics withdrawn from medication at UCLA.

1993: Kathryn Hamilton dies 44 days after participating in breast cancer experiment at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle.

1994. The Albuquerque Tribune publicizes 1940s experiments involving plutonium injection of human research subjects and secret radiation experiments. Indigent patients and mentally retarded children were deceived about the nature of their treatment.

1994. President Clinton appoints the Advisory Commission on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE) The ACHRE Report http://tis.eh.doe.gov/ohre/roadmap/achre/index.html

1995. U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) published Human Radiation Experiments, listing 150 plus an additional 275 radiation experiments conducted by DOE and the Atomic Energy Commission, during the 1940s - 1970s. http://tis.eh.doe.gov/ohre/roadmap/experiments/0491doca.html#0491_List

1995: 19-year-old University of Rochester student Nicole Wan dies after being paid $150 to participate in MIT-sponsored experiment to test airborne pollutant chemicals.

1995. President Clinton appoints the National Bioethics Advisory Commission.

1995: NYS Supreme Court rules (TD v NYS Office of Mental Health) against the state's policy of conducting nontherapeutic experiments on mentally incapacitated persons - including children - without informed consent. Justice Edward Greenfield ruled that parents have no authority to volunteer their children: "Parents may be free to make martyrs of themselves, but it does not follow that they may make martyrs of their children."

1995: Thirty-four healthy, previously non-aggressive New York City minority children, boys aged 6 to 11 years old, were exposed to fenfluramine in a nontherapeutic experiment at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. The children were exposed to this neurotoxic drug to record their neurochemical response in an effort to prove a speculative theory linking aggression to a biological marker.

1996. Cleveland Plain Dealer investigative report series, 'Drug Trials: Do People Know the Truth About Experiments,' December 15 to 18, 1996. The Plain-Dealer found: of the "4,154 FDA inspections of researchers testing new drugs on people [since 1977] . . . more than half the researchers were cited by FDA inspectors for failing to clearly disclose the experimental nature of their work."

1996: Yale University researchers publish findings of experiment that subjected 18 stable schizophrenia patients to psychotic relapse in an amphetamine provocation experiment at West Haven VA.

1997. President Clinton issues a formal apology to the subjects of the Tuskegee syphilis experiments. NBAC continues investigation into genetics, consent, privacy, and research on persons with mental disorders.

1997. Researchers at the University of Cincinnati publish findings of experiment attempting to create a "psychosis model" on human beings at the Cincinnati VA. Sixteen patients, experiencing a first episode schizophrenia, were subjected to repeated provocation with amphetamine. The stated purpose was to produce "behavioral sensitization. This process serves as a model for the development of psychosis, but has been little studied in humans. Symptoms, such as severity of psychosis and eye-blink rates, were measured hourly for 5 hours."

1997. U.S. government sponsored placebo-controlled experiment withholds treatment from HIV infected, pregnant African women. NY Times, Sept. 18.

1997. Victims of unethical research at major U.S. medical centers - including the NIMH - testify before the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, Sept. 18.

1997. FDA Modernization Act gives pharmaceutical companies a huge financial incentive - a 6 month patent exclusivity extension - if they conduct drug tests on children. The incentive can yield $900 million.

1998. National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) Report. Research Involving Subjects with Mental Disorders That May Affect Decisionmaking Capacity. November 12,

1998 http://bioethics.georgetown.edu/nbac/capacity/TOC.htm

1998: The Japanese government has never formally apologized for Unit 731's activities, and did not even admit to its existence until August 1998, when the Supreme Court ruled that the existence of the unit was accepted in academic circles.

1998. Complaint filed with OPRR about experiments that exposed non-violent children in New York City to fenfluramine to find a predisposition to violence.

1998: Boston Globe (four part) series, "Doing Harm: Research on the Mentally Ill" shed light on the mistreatment and exploitation of schizophrenia patients who have been subjected to relapse producing procedures in unethical experiments.

1999: Nine month-old Gage Stevens dies at Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh during participation in Propulsid clinical trial for infant acid reflux.

1999: 18-year-old Jesse Gelsinger dies after being injected with 37 trillion particles of adenovirus in gene therapy experiment at University of Pennsylvania.

1999: Director of National Institute of Mental Health suspends 29 clinical trials that failed to meet either ethical or scientific standards.

2000: University of Oklahoma melanoma trial halted for failure to follow government regulations and protocol.

2000: OPRR becomes Office of Human Research Protection ("OHRP") and made part of the Department of Health and Human Services.

2000: President Clinton implements the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Act of 2000, which authorized compensation for thousands of Department of Energy workers who sacrificed their health in building the nation's nuclear defenses.

2000: The Washington Post (6 part) series, "Body Hunters" exposes unethical exploitation in experiments conducted by U.S. investigators in underdeveloped countries. Part 4 dealt with U.S. government funded, genetic experiments conducted by Harvard University in rural China.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26797-2000Dec19.html

2001: A biotech company in Pennsylvania asks the FDA for permission to conduct placebo trials on infants in Latin America born with serious lung disease though such tests would be illegal in U.S.

2001: Ellen Roche, a healthy 27-year old volunteer, dies in challenge study at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

2001: April 4, Elaine Holden-Able, a healthy retired nurse, consumed a glass of orange juice that had been mixed with a dietary supplement for the sake of medical research. This Case Western University Alzheimer's experiment, financed by the tobacco industry, wound up killing her in what was called a ''tragic human error.'' Federal Office of Human Research Protections did not interview hospital staff, mostly accepted hospital's internal report, imposed no penalty, and closed the case and did not mention the death in its letter of determination. http://ohrp.osophs.dhhs.gov/detrm_letrs/nov01f.pdf

2001: Maryland Court of Appeals renders a landmark decision affirming "best interest of the individual child" as a standard for medical research involving children. The Court unequivocally prohibited nontherapeutic experimentation on children. (Higgins and Grimes v. Kennedy Krieger Institute).The case involved exposure of babies and small children to lead poisoning in EPA funded experiment. (http://www.courts.state.md.us/opinions/coa/2001/128a00.pdf)

 

 


Note:  A very sobering chronology of unethical human research -- at least such that was reported -- well worth contemplating -- especially now that even our federal agencies are pushing to do away with the 'informed consent' requirement as the only way to get 'data';  see, e.g.: 

**Medical Research Stakeholders Seek to Overturn Informed Consent Protections;  Part 3 of 4, at:  http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/928/9/

**Medical Research Stakeholders Seek to Overturn Informed Consent Protections;  Part 2 of 4, at:  http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/927/81/

**Another View Academics for Informed Consent, at:  http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/926/99/

**Medical Research Stakeholders Seek to Overturn Informed Consent Protection;  Part 1 of 4, at:  http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/925/81/

**OHRP Caves Under SUPPORT Pressure Re: oxygen experiment tiny premature babies, at:  http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/924/81/

Note especially the unethical research pre-World War II through 2001 -- all performed supposedly for 'beneficent, altruistic or 'national security' reasons, mostly by government agencies, esteemed academic medical facilities, prominent investigators, pharmaceutical companies -- mostly without 'informed consent' or the victims' knowledge, on vulnerable children, prisoners, the elderly, mentally ill and retarded, political and ethnic opponents, Third World populace, etc.  Given the current explosion of especially genetic and genetic engineering research -- and the concomitant explosion of scientific fraud and unethical experiments -- all need to be aware of these very disturbing precedents.  'Data' at any cost.  'Bioethics' would approve most of this as being 'for the greater good'.  However, there are other 'ethics' insisting that 'the ends never justify the means'.  See especially 1974, above.  Please read carefully, all the way through to the end.  I bet you won't be able to.  Note:  'VA' used above usually refers to 'Veterans Administration'.  . -- DNI]



The End of Bretton Woods

by Peter Coyne

Please, no more of this 'Nixon took us off of the gold standard' garbage!" writes one reader in response to yesterday's reckoning. If you missed it, we learned about two precursors to our present monetary woes in that episode:

First, we learned from our founder, Addison Wiggin, that 70 years ago, during the Bretton Woods Conference at the end of World War II, the world left the gold standard. The United States, being the world's undisputed hegemon, was able to snag a role as the world's reserve currency -- the most widely held and used currency. To maintain trust in the greenback, foreign nations would be able to trade $35 for an ounce of U.S. gold upon request.

Second, in our first featured video -- an interview we conducted with Mr. Lewis Lehrman last year -- we learned that the U.S. abused this privilege by running massive trade deficits. That is, by spending more money that it had to buy more than it produced. Finally, instead of worrying about balancing the books, President Nixon decided 43 years ago this Friday to remove the one hurdle to unlimited government spending -- convertability of the dollar into gold.

That brings us back to our dear reader. "FDR was the one who removed us from the gold standard when he issued an illegal executive order that prohibited citizens from owning gold":




© 2014 Agora Financial, LLC

 

QuotesHe ordered them to turn in gold, and made it impossible for any American to convert gold notes to actual gold. Nixon in fact made gold ownership legal again by ending FDR's prohibition, and protected America's gold stores, (whatever we had then), from being taken by the British, etc., by doing as this writer describes.

"If someone wants to point a finger, point it at FDR, who took us off gold, and at LBJ, who removed silver from our coinage, both unconstitutional and illegal moves that Congress went along with.
Quotes

We have no qualms over your history. Our point, however, is that the global monetary system shifted on Sunday, Aug. 15, 1971. Since then, the dollar's value has been an enigma.

What is a dollar?

It's just a claim to another dollar… or four quarters… or 10 dimes. You have to pay taxes with it, so most people use them. But it has no intrinsic value.

We're reminded of the C-SPAN clip featured in Addison's documentary I.O.U.S.A. It was between Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and our former employer, Congressman Ron Paul. Greenspan agreed that no one really knows what money is today, and therefore, there was no way the Fed could hope to ever manage it:

 Alan Greenspan: As I've said earlier, the difficulty is defining what money truly is. We have been unable to define a monetary aggregate that will give us a reliable forecast for the economy. Until we find a reliable "M" we will go light on the use of monetary aggregates for monetary policy purposes.

Ron Paul: So it's hard to manage something you can't define.

Alan Greenspan: It's impossible to manage something you cannot define…

Our theme this week, the "End of Bretton Woods," was Dr. Paul's impetus for running for Congress in the first place. "I saw 1971 as the conversion from a token commodity money,  to an absolute political money."

We can tell you from working for the good doctor that he had no delusions about the mission he was on. Dr. Paul was under no impression that he alone could reverse the ship of state's course toward monetary collapse.

In the final years of his congressional tenure, he was even able to claim a small leadership position over the Financial Services Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology. That's one of the subcommittees that oversaw the Federal Reserve's decisions.
 
Politics, Dr. Paul notes, is, at best, a tool for education. 

Yet , one congressman can hardly alter the political situation. Politics, Dr. Paul notes, is, at best, a tool for education. Part of this week's theme is education, for sure. Understanding the ways that your elected representatives have altered the money at your expense for political reasons is the first step to realizing it can happen again.

It's important to keep in mind, however, that the likely solution is not a political one.







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Just-Discovered Letter Shows Margaret Sanger Was Part of Euthanasia Society

by Carole Novielli

 

In 1938, just a few years prior to the American Birth Control League (ABCL) changing its name to Planned Parenthood, which today is the largest abortion provider in the nation, a group of American Eugenics Society Members and members of Margaret Sanger's American Birth Control League (ABCL) formed the National Society for the Legalization of Euthanasia.

One Source here

Heading this pro-euthanasia panel was a man by the name of Charles F. Potter who, in 1938 was also on the ABCL Committee for Planned Parenthood according to a February 1938, New York Times story.

Also on this board was Sidney Goldstein who sat on the American Birth Control League's National Council and later was on Planned Parenthood's Board of Directors.

Another member was Frank H. Hankins who was a managing editor for Planned Parenthood founder, Margaret Sanger's newsletter called the Birth Control Review. Hankins was also an American Eugenics Society member.
Another more famous name who was sat on the advisory board of this panel was Julian Huxley, who was a recipient of a Planned Parenthood award.
Mrs. F. Robertson Jones was also on this panel, she was an ABCL President, wrote for Sanger's Birth Control Review, and was an honorary board member of Planned Parenthood-World Population and a Board of Director of Planned Parenthood.

ABCL Citizen's Committee for Planned Parenthood member, Dr. Foster Kennedy, was also on the panel.

American Eugenics Society Member, Clarence Cook Little was the President of Margaret Sanger's American Birth Control League (ABCL), at the same time he was on this pro-euthanasia panel.

Clarence Little was the president of the University of Michigan, a founding member of The American Eugenics Society, and a board member of the American Birth Control League which would later be known as Planned Parenthood. (Watch Maafa21)

American Eugenics Society founder and friend to Margaret Sanger, Leon Whitney, also sat on this panel. Whitney advocated forced sterilization, was published in Sanger' Birth Control Review, and openly praised Adolf Hitler for his Nazi effort.

MARGARET SANGER AND EUTHANASIA

It is unclear why Planned Parenthood founder, Margaret Sanger was not listed on the above article because Sanger was clearly involved in the Euthanasia Society. Sanger was a member of the American Eugenics Society and many of their members were on this panel. Sanger admitted that she gave a speech to the Klu Klu Klan and in her autobiography, she bragged that she received a dozen invites from the Klan for further speeches. By 1952, Margaret Sanger was open about her belief in Euthanasia.

This 1952 letter from the Euthanasia Society of America clearly shows Margret Sanger on the American Advisory Board of the Euthanasia Society of America

In addition to Margaret Sanger who founded Planned Parenthood the panel also shows Henry P. Fairchild a past president of the American Eugenics Society, a VP of Planned Parenthood;
See here where Sanger is listed as Honorary Chairman of Planned Parenthood in their early years:
Also listed is Harry Emerson Fosdick, who was a recipient of the Albert Lasker Awards Given by Planned Parenthood in 1953.  Henry H. Goddard is also listed and he was published in Margaret Sanger's book, The Case for Birth Control.

Also on the list is Samuel H Holmes. According to the film, Maafa21, in a 1929 speech, American eugenicist Samuel Holmes had proposed that mandatory birth control should be used as a tool to eliminate what he called the menace to the white race that had been created by increases in black population. His solution was to have a quota system in which the right to have a child would be controlled by the government and determined by race. At the time, Holmes was on the National Council of the American Birth Control League which would later become known as Planned Parenthood.

Frank L, Babbott is listed as a Vice President of this Euthanasia Society. Babbott was a founding member of the American Eugenics Society.

Frank H. Hankins  is listed on the Board of Director his associations are listed above.

Clarence C . Little is also listed on the board of directors. Clarence Little was the president of the University of Michigan, a founding member of The American Eugenics Society, and a board member of the American Birth Control League which would later be known as Planned Parenthood. He was President of the International Fed of Birth Control League, Birth Control Federation President, on the Birth Control review editorial board, A Birth Control Federation of America VP, and on the 1938 Citizen Committee for Planned Parenthood. Among other known Sanger associations.

Charles Francis Potter was founder of the Humanist Society and in 1924 Margaret Sanger wrote an Introduction for Charles Francis Potter. Potter was active in the Rhode Island Maternal Health Association, which he served as medical director, as well as Planned Parenthood. He was a member of the American, Rhode Island, and Providence medical societies.

In 1967, Dr. Potter was awarded the Margaret Sanger Medal by Planned Parenthood for outstanding service to family planning, after he served 11 years as medical director of its clinic.

President of the Euthanasia Society was Mrs. F Robertson Jones who was also on Margaret Sanger's ABCL board.  We would later discover that RL Dickinson was President of the Euthanasia Society and Senior VP of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

In 2012 PETER GOODWIN, MD ended his life in accordance with Oregon's Measure 16 'Death with Dignity Act,' the landmark legislation that he helped craft and champion into law in 1997.  Aside from publicly advocating for Measure 16, he served as chairman of the Oregon Death with Dignity Committee. He was also a member of the Planned Parenthood of Columbia/Willamette board.

In 1964, Evelyn Ames co-founded the Planned Parenthood Association of Nashville. She served as the organization's southeastern representative for nine southern states, and on the executive committee of the national board of directors of Planned Parenthood-World Population. She was also a founder and member of the board of the Nashville chapter of Concern for Dying, an advocacy group for the right to die. Ames Davis died in 1993.

Esther Instebo delivered donations and filled fundraiser tables for Planned Parenthood and Washington politicians. Instebo pulled her friends into Democratic Party politics. Instebo worked with the euthanasia organization Compassion & Choices to qualify for help in dying under the state's Death with Dignity law. Knowing that she had that option greatly improved the quality of the last six months of her life because she knew she wouldn't have to put up with what she was afraid of.

According to researcher, Rita Dillar, when Compassion & Choices, formerly The Hemlock Society, convened its June 2012 conference, former Planned Parenthood insider Theresa Connor was a featured speaker. She was public policy director for Planned Parenthood in Washington state for 15 years and instituted the research and strategy behind the 2001 Erickson v. Bartell case that required employers/ insurance plans to cover prescription birth control under anti-discrimination laws.

It is interesting how Margaret Sanger, founded in Eugenics, the American Eugenics Society, and members of the Planned Parenthood all helped establish euthanasia and so-called mercy-killing ideologies in America. The purveyors of death have taken their fanaticism all the way from conception to end of life and no one is outside their bloody grips.



{British royal family physician Dr. Horder oversaw the entire Nazi medical program, and was president of the British Eugenics Society from 1935 - 1950s, and president of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society.  The U.S. branch was called the American Eugenics Society.  In 1938 a group of American Eugenics Society Members and members of Margaret Sanger's American Birth Control League (ABCL) formed the National Society for the Legalization of Euthanasiahttp://www.lifenews.com/2014/04/02/just-discovered-letter-shows-margaret-sanger-was-part-of-euthanasia-society/.  In 1952 the American Eugenics Society merged with the Rockefeller Population Council.  This Eugenics/Population Council awarded a grant in 1968 to Daniel Callahan (with ex-Communist behavioral psychiatrist Willard Gaylin) to found the first bioethics Hastings Center in 1969Callahan worked also with the Population Council, and was on the board of directors of the American Eugenics Society from 1987 - 1993.  Leading bioethics fellows included Peter Singer, and Ezekiel Emanuel (Obama's administration)

A major funder of the new bioethics Hastings Center was Monsanto   [http://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/topic/excellence_in_philanthropy/philanthropys_brave_new_world].  Another organization birthed out of the American Eugenics Society was Planned Parenthood, headed by William Gates, father of Bill Gates. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation currently funds the use of midwives in Indonesia to improve access to family planning.  [http://www.impatientoptimists.org/Posts/2014/01/Midwives-Critical-Players-in-Delivering-Family-Planning-in-Indonesia],  as do WHO, UNFPA, UNICEF, and the World Bank  [http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2007/9241545879_eng.pdf] -- and the Population Council  [http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/population-control-advocates-plan-to-expand-abortion-through-midwives].  The Population Council works hard to provide 'safe abortions' around the globe  [http://www.popcouncil.org/research/safe-abortion-and-postabortion-care].

The Gates Foundation has also long been involved in vaccines, pharmaceuticals, GMOs, reproductive control, weather manipulation, global warming, etc.  Bill Gates, purchased 500,000 shares in Monsanto back in 2010 valued at more than $23 million, now has a direct interest in seeing Monsanto succeed in spreading GMOs around the world  [http://www.naturalnews.com/035105_Bill_Gates_Monsanto_eugenics.html].  More recently Monsanto is partnering with various synthetic biology pharma organizations   [http://www.marketwatch.com/story/cellectis-compact-talentm-the-next-generation-of-tal-effector-nucleases-2013-05-21 - DNI}

LifeNews Note: Carole Novielli is the author of the blog Saynsumthn, where this article originally appeared.








Bill and Melinda Gates: Controlling Population and Public Education

by Anne Hendershott

Continuing their commitment to controlling global population growth through artificial contraception, sterilization, and abortion initiatives, Microsoft founder and philanthropist, Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, a self-described “practicing” Catholic, are now attempting to control the curriculum of the nation’s public schools. Subsidizing the Common Core State Standards in English language arts and mathematics, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has committed more than $76 million to support teachers in implementing the Common Core—a standardized national curriculum.  This, on top of the tens of millions they have already awarded to the National Governor’s Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers to develop the Common Core in the first place.

Working collaboratively with the Obama administration, the Gates Foundation subsidized the creation of a national curriculum for English and mathematics that has now been adopted by 46 states, and the District of Columbia—despite the fact that the General Education Provisions Act, the Department of Education Organization Act, and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act all protect states against such an intrusion by the United States Department of Education.

The Common Core Standards were developed by an organization called Achieve, and the National Governors Association—both of which were funded by the Gates Foundation.  The standards have been imposed on the states without any field testing, and little or no input from those involved in implementing the standards.  In a post entitled “Why I Cannot Support the Common Core Standards,” educational policy analyst and New York University Research Professor, Diane Ravitch, wrote that the standards “are being imposed on the children of this nation despite the fact that no one has any idea how they will affect students, teachers or schools…Their creation was neither grassroots nor did it emanate from the states."

Ravitch is especially concerned about the content of the curriculum—what she called the “flap over fiction vs. informational text.”  Rather than giving English teachers the freedom to teach literature, the Common Core mandates that a far greater percentage of classroom time be spent on “fact-based” learning. Ravitch’s concerns are shared by others.  For example, one teacher claimed that she had to give up having her students read Shakespeare in favor of Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point because it was “fact-based” and Shakespeare was not. Of course, Tipping Point has a political agenda.  Parents may be concerned if they were to learn that Gladwell suggests such “facts” as the belief that parents should stop worrying about their children’s “experimentation with drugs,” including cocaine because “it seldom leads to hardcore use.”

“Fact-based” books on climate change are also replacing classic works of literature because they are viewed as offering students an opportunity to learn “science.” Freakonomics—a book that has already been a favorite of public school teachers—is preferable to Poe because students will learn about the positive effects of abortion on reducing crime rates by reducing the population of those more likely to commit crime.

While the adoption of the Common Core was “voluntary” by the 46 states that adopted it, it was well understood by these states that they would not be eligible for Race to the Top funding ($4.35 billion) unless they adopted the Common Core standards.  The Gates Foundation was very much a part of this.  According to Lyndsey Layton of the Washington Post (December 2, 2012), “the Gates Foundation invested tens of millions of dollars in the effort…The Obama administration kicked the notion into high gear when it required states to adopt the common core—or an equivalent—in order to compete for Race to the Top grant funds.

Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post recently reported (February 26, 2013) that there is growing resistance. Alabama, for example, withdrew from the two consortia that are working on creating standardized tests aligned with the standards. Indiana, which adopted the Common Core in 2010 under the state education superintendent Tony Bennett, is now talking about a “pause” in the implementation of the curriculum.  Bennett was defeated in the November elections by an educator who opposed Bennett’s support for the Common Core.

Now, there are concerns that the imposition of the Common Core within the public schools could threaten the autonomy of private schools, religious schools and home schools.  An op-ed published in the Orange County Register by Robert Holland, claims that the Common Core could “morph into a national curriculum that will stifle the family-centered creativity that has fostered high rates of achievement and growth for home education…Many private and parochial schools—including those of the 100 Roman Catholic dioceses across the nation, already are adopting the CCSS prescriptions for math and English classes…Their debatable reasoning is that the rush of most state governments to embrace the national standards means publishers of textbooks and tests will fall in line, thereby leaving private schools with no practical alternatives for instructional materials.  According to October 8, 2012 article in Education Week by Erik Robelin, it is not just Catholic schools that are adopting the Common Core, some Lutheran and other denominations of Christian schools are shifting to the common core, including Grand Rapids Christian in Michigan and the Christian Academy School System in Louisville, KY.  According to Robelin, parochial school leaders claim that they must “remain competitive” with public schools and now feel pressured to adopt the Core. These are real concerns.  As Diane Ravitch points out, “Now that David Coleman, the primary architect of the Common Core standards has become president of the College Board, we can expect that SAT will be aligned to the standards.  No one will escape their reach, whether they attend public or private school.”

On February 14, 2013, Missouri legislator Kurt Bahr filed HB616 that prohibits the State Board of Education from implementing the Common Core for public schools developed by the Common Core Initiative or any other statewide education standards without the approval of the General Assembly. An increasing number of parents are voicing their concerns.  For example, Tiffany Mouritsen, a Utah mother, blogged that the American Institutes for Research (AIR), the primary source for Common Core testing is a major concern for her:  “AIR markets its values which includes promoting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual agenda for teens, and publicizes its client list (including George Soros and Bill and Melinda Gates).”  In a column published in January, political commentator Michelle Malkin calls the Common Core a “stealthy federal takeover of school curriculum and standards across the country.” And, she maintains that the Common Core’s “dubious college and career read standards undermine local control of education, usurp state autonomy over curricular materials, and foist untested, mediocre and incoherent pedagogical theories on America’s schoolchildren."

The Gates Foundation: Buying Control

The promise of federal funds to states in order to “encourage” them to adopt the Common Core is nothing new.  Our government has been doing this both nationally and internationally for decades.  In a 2008 book entitled Fatal Misconception, author Matthew Connelly writes that in the 1960s, President Lyndon Johnson leveraged food aid for family planning during crop failures in India, thus creating an incentive for the sterilization program.  India’s Ministry of Health and Family Planning admitted that, “The large number of sterilizations and IUD insertions during 1967-68 was due to drought conditions.”  Eventually, more sophisticated incentives such as bicycles and radios were used to encourage women to accept sterilization.  Connelly writes that under Indira Gandhi in the mid-1970s sterilization became a condition not just for land allotments, but for irrigation water, electricity, ration cards, rickshaw licenses, medical care, pay raises and promotions.  There were sterilization quotas—especially for the Dalits (the untouchable caste) who were targeted for family planning.

While the Gates Foundation has not been involved in anything this coercive, they have indeed been very much involved in giving aid to those countries willing to participate in family planning initiatives.   For nearly two decades, the Gates Foundation has been generous in providing aid to more than 100 countries—often coupled with family planning opportunities.  Such aid is often framed as a way to foster economic growth.  In an article in American Thinker, Andressen Blom and James Bell wrote that Melinda Gates made that connection explicit in a speech at a population gathering that “government leaders are now beginning to understand that providing access to contraceptives is a cost effective way to foster economic growth.”

Bill Gates revealed his own population goals in February, 2010, at the invitation-only Technology, Entertainment and Design Conference in Long Beach, California, when he gave his keynote speech on global warming: “Innovating to Zero!” In a youtube video available here,  Gates stated that CO2 emissions must be reduced to zero by 2050 and advised those in attendance that population had much to do with the increase in CO2.  Claiming that each individual on the planet puts out an average of about five tons of CO2 per year, Gates stated that “Somehow we have to make changes that will bring that down to zero…It has been constantly going up. It’s only various economic changes that have even flattened it at all.”  To illustrate, Gates presented the following equation: CO2 (total population emitted CO2 per year) = P (people) x S (services per person) x E (average energy per service) x C (average CO2 emitted per unit of energy).  Gates told the audience that “probably one of these numbers is going to have to get pretty near to zero.  That’s a fact from high school algebra.”  For Gates, the P (population) portion of the equation is the most important: “If we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent.”

Gates maintains that improvements in health care—including an expansion of the administration of vaccinations—will encourage families to reduce the number of children they desire to have.  And, in an ongoing attempt to expand the types of birth control, Gates has spent millions of dollars on research and development.  According to Christian Voice, a few years ago the Gates Foundation awarded a grant of $100,000 to researchers at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, to develop a new type of ultrasound described as a “non-invasive form of birth control for men” which would make a man infertile for up to six months.

Such strategies have been effective.   In fact, the Gates Foundation has been so successful in their family planning initiatives that the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) awarded their annual Population Award in 2010 to the Foundation.  According to a June 15, 2010 article in Mercator.net, at the awards ceremony, UNFPA executive director Thoraya Obaid cited the Gates Foundation as a “leader in the fields of global health and global development, particularly in promoting excellence in population assistance, including through the design of innovative, integrated solutions in the areas of reproductive health, family planning, and maternal and neonatal health.”  The International Planned Parenthood Federation is a previous winner of the United Nations Population Fund’s Annual Award.

It is easy to understand why the United Nations Population Fund—a fund which Steven Mosher, the President of the Population Research Institute has exposed as being a direct participant in China’s coercive one-child policy—honored Gates with their prestigious Population Fund award since the Gates Foundation has donated more than one billion dollars to “family-planning” groups including the United Nations Population Fund itself; CARE International—an organization which is lobbying for legalized abortion in several African nations; Save the Children—a major promoter of the population control agenda, the World Health Organizationan organization that forcibly sterilized thousands of women in the 1990s under the pretence of providing tetanus vaccination services in Nicaragua, Mexico and the Philippines; and of course, the major abortion provider, International Planned Parenthood Federation.

Bill and Melinda Gates truly believe that population control is key to the future.  Plans are already in place to track births and vaccinations through cell phone technology to register every birth on the planet.  Gates claims that the GPS technology would enable officials to track and “remind” parents who do not bring their children in for vaccines.   Maintaining that vaccination is key to reducing population growth, Gates predicts that if child mortality can be reduced, parents will have fewer children, following the example of the urbanized West where birth rates have dropped to below replacement levels: “The fact is that within a decade of improving health outcomes, parents decide to have fewer children.”   For Gates, “there is no such thing as a healthy, high population growth country.  If you’re healthy, you’re low-population growth… As the world grows from 6 billion to 9 billion, all of that population growth is in urban slums…It’s a very interesting problem.”

More than a decade ago, on May 17, 2002, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had purchased shares in nine of the largest pharmaceutical companies valued at nearly $205 million.  Acquiring shares in Merck, Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson Wyeth, Abbott Labs, and others, the Gates Foundation continues a financial interest in common with the makers of AIDS drugs, diagnostic tools, vaccines, and contraceptives.  But, the commitment to global population control goes well beyond financial interests.  It is likely that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will continue its commitment to global population control, and now, curriculum creation in the nation’s schools because they truly believe that they know better than anyone else how we all should live.

A Product of Poor Catholic Education

It is difficult to believe the claims of Bill and Melinda Gates that they are not involved in the abortion industry when you look at the relationships they have with organizations like the International Planned Parenthood Federation—the largest abortion provider in the world.  According to the National Catholic Register, Melinda Gates represents herself in the media as a practicing Catholic who has a great uncle who was a Jesuit priest and a great aunt who was an Ursuline nun who taught her to read.  She graduated from Ursuline Academy in Dallas, where she claims to have learned “incredible social justice.”  And, this may indeed be where the problem begins.  For so many Catholics, social justice has been so broadly defined that it now includes giving women access to reproductive rights—including the right to abortion—so that they can play an equal role in contributing to the workplace and the economy.  In an article entitled “Why Birth Control is Still a Big Idea” published in Foreign Policy in December, 2012, Melinda Gates writes:

Contraceptives unlock one of the most dormant but potentially powerful assets in development:  women as decision makers.  When women have the power to make choices about their families, they tend to decide precisely what demographers, economists, and development experts recommend.

Most recently, in a January 2, 2013 article published on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation website entitled “Profiles in Courage: Philippines Passes Reproductive Health Bill,” the article congratulates all of those who helped bring expanded access to “reproductive health” through the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012—recently signed by President Aquino. This bill states that women and men—living in the most Catholic of Catholic countries—can now “decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children.”   What the Gates Foundation website omits is information about the provision within the bill involving “population management” through mandatory counseling of couples seeking marriage licenses.  In this case, social justice involves a demand that couples learn about the government’s views on an ideal family size of two children—coming one step closer to China in its government’s one-child policy.

This commitment to a distorted definition of social justice by Melinda and Bill Gates will likely continue because they have been lead to believe that such control is what is best for people.  The Core Curriculum is really just another component of population control—it is used to help teach children the “facts” about climate change and problems of over-population.  Indeed, the population agenda is a trap that many wealthy, highly intelligent people have fallen into in the past. From the wealthy eugenics supporters of Planned Parenthood’s Founder Margaret Sanger, to the Rockefeller family and their population control initiatives, this work continues today through their heirs—heirs like David Rockefeller—an ally of Bill and Melinda Gates.  And some influential Catholics have been complicit in this.  At one time, Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, President Emeritus of the University of Notre Dame served as a trustee, and later, Chairman of the Board of the Rockefeller Foundation, a funder of population causes counter to the teachings of the Church.

The population control initiatives promoted by the Gates Foundation will continue to grow nationally and internationally because they have convinced others and themselves that they are saving lives. On their website, they ask: “what is more life affirming than saving one third of mothers from dying in childbirth?”   What they do not seem to acknowledge is how many unborn children have died from their initiatives.

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Anne Hendershott is Professor of Sociology at Franciscan University in Steubenville. Previously, she taught for fifteen years as a tenured faculty member at the University of San Diego. She is the author of Status Envy: The Politics of Catholic Higher Education and The Politics of Abortion.