number one hit song: Do you have to see the body bags before you make a stand?

December 03, 2004

Do you have to see the body bags before you make a stand?

Wow. Those of you who read Mefi regularly have probably already seen this thread, but the charges are so outrageous and dispiriting that I thought I would share the wealth of abject horror with all of you. (Heck, why don't you join me in a pre-noon boilermaker? Now that I have my own office I don't need to conceal my alcoholism. It must be 5 o'clock somewhere in the world.)

Essentially, this BBC program charges the ACS with using NYC's foster children as AIDS drug guinea pigs. These allegations are incredibly shocking, and not at all unsubstantiated. You can read the transcript here, which contains this heartbreaking monologue:

In a mass grave owned by the Roman Catholic Church close to Manhattan, over a thousand children’s bodies, including some who were enrolled in the trials, lie beneath a tarpaulin. Officially their deaths are recorded only as resulting from ‘natural causes’.

You could also read this article in the NY Press which is very thorough but, like every single article that appears in the Press, it gives a bit too much facetime to the tinfoil hat brigade. Anyhow.

Why is it that this is all news to me, a NYC resident? Why hasn't mainstream, American media touched on this at all?

Update:
Hm, my knees hurt from jerking so much. A psychologist specializing in inner-city HIV research and treatment posts two interesting rebuttals to the claims put forth in the BBC documentary. What's interesting--and this is something I didn't realize--is that the one medical professional who's interviewed extensively in the documentary denies the connection between HIV and AIDS and believes that the medical treatments offered by mainstream medicine are toxic. That should have sent up warning flags to the producers, no?

Posted by Dana at 10:21 AM

In my hunt for new words and forms of language, I read more news in a day than most people read in a month. The Post, believe it or not, is in the upper tier of newspapers when you compare it to most of the world's shitrags passing as newspapers. (But in this case, I went and dug up the Post story out of the newspaper archives because I knew I remembered reading about it somewhere quite a while ago.) And I should add, this does deserve more attention. I couldn't find anything about it in the other New York papers from last February or March, although the Observer in London and Murdoch newspapers picked up the Post's work.

Posted by: Grant Barrett at December 3, 2004 01:33 PM

This is actually old news. The New York Post ran a story, for example, on 29 February 2004, titled "AIDS TOTS USED AS 'GUINEA PIGS' - PROBE OF CITY FOSTER CENTER'S HIV RX TESTS." (I know, the Post, but I believe it was covered elsewhere, too.)

Posted by: Grant Barrett at December 3, 2004 12:51 PM

You're right; it is old news, but it's news to me. Why hasn't Spitzer investigated it?

(What are you doing reading the Post? Ugh, even skimming it makes me want to stomp fuzzy, blue-eyed kitties to death.)

Posted by: dana at December 3, 2004 01:04 PM