“Justina’s Law” seeks to curb experimentation on foster children

Rob Wipond
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A bipartisan group of House lawmakers have introduced a bill called “Justina’s Law” to limit federal funding for medical research involving foster children, according to the Washington Times. The bill is named after Justina Pelletier, who was given a psychiatric diagnosis in line with experimental research going on at Boston’s Children’s Hospital and then seized by the state. According to Health Impact News Daily, many hospitals “have an internal policy that allows for children who are deemed ‘wards of the State’, including foster children, to receive treatment or be involved in research that presents great risk even if there is no prospect of any benefit to the child.”

“Justina’s Law” Seeks to End Experimental Medical Research on Children Seized by Child Protection Services (Health Impact News Daily, June 30, 2014)

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Rob Wipond
Rob Wipond
Rob Wipond is a freelance journalist who writes frequently on the interfaces between psychiatry, civil rights, the justice system, and social change. His articles have been nominated for three Canadian National Magazine Awards, nine Western Magazine Awards, and five Webster Awards for journalism. He is currently working on a book about people's experiences of forced psychiatric treatment, and can be contacted through his website.

11 COMMENTS

  1. Sixty-seven years ago in Nuremberg, Germany, American prosecutors confronted the Nazi physicians who had subjected Jews and others to a regime of medical research. The “doctors’ trial” was the first of the war crimes trials; one of its outcomes was the famous Nuremberg Code, a set of ethical guidelines for human experimentation.

    The first tenet of the code is very clear: “The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.”

    http://www.ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/online-features/special-focus/doctors-trial/nuremberg-code

    What part of the phrase “voluntary consent” don’t they understand ?

  2. I already knew psychiatry was the worlds worst violator of human rights, they violated mine after I had a nervous breakdown, was inpatient like Justina was, disagreed with the diagnosis of a permanent mental illness, refused treatment and for that I was threatened with a forced injection a ‘needle rape’ , it was very scary and traumatizing … but I had no idea they went as far as to officially do experiments on foster children. Scary !

    Abner Louima is a Haitian who was assaulted, brutalized and forcibly sodomized with the handle of a plunger by New York City police officers after being arrested outside a Brooklyn nightclub in 1997. Instead of toilet plungers these “doctors” use hypodermic needles.

    If the Abner Louima comparison sounds way over the top to you and to radical , that means in you never came face to face with coercive psychiatry, take these drugs or else… That’s what that means.

    • I hope Justina is alright, to this day the sights and smells associated with hospitals causes me distress. I had to take a friend to the ER and it was very distressing, logically I knew I was safe but with the memory of my ordeal I just couldn’t be in there and left.

      • I’m glad you said that Copy Cat. Yes, the triggers get learned and it hasn’t got to do with your obsessing, the drugs and the force and the loss of you right to walk gets you beaten down. I still wonder on the way home from some errand or hike in the woods if the cops are coming for something not on the radar.

      • I am so afraid that at some point I’ll need a medical procedure that requires hospital stay and I will freak the hell out. But according to the “good professionals” it’s my underlying mental illness, they did nothing wrong.

  3. Unfortunately, this misses the point by a good margin. It is not just the experimental treatments that are dangerous to foster youth. It is the generally accepted treatments, like “treating” a 4-year-old for “bipolar disorder” with atypical antipsychotics, or “treating” a 1-year-old with stimulants for “ADHD symptoms.” Yes, these things do occur regularly, and no, they aren’t experimental. Justina’s treatment did not qualify as experimental, either, as far as I can tell. They simply decided that she wasn’t really ill and had a psychiatric disorder causing her to think she is ill. There is something particularly ironic about them forcing treatment on her because she believed she was ill when they thought she wasn’t. If she wasn’t ill, then what were they treating???

    I hope they go a lot farther than the article suggests. This won’t even scratch the surface of the disservice done to foster youth by medicalizing their understandable reactions to horrific situations.

    — Steve

    • I know what they do to foster kids, I watched this video http://youtu.be/8W8SHEe5y-o

      This video shows one 7-year-old holding a bag filled with 13 psychiatric medications that she had taken. Another young child interviewed by ABC described the effect of the antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs he was taking: “They made me feel like I had a thousand bricks on my head.” Still another child said, “Some of the medications were for ADHD but I’m not ADHD, I’m just naughty.” A teen in foster care on multiple psychiatric drugs said she felt like a “guinea pig.”

      I lived the nightmare as an adult after falling for the serotonin scam, it must be 10 times worse for kids.

      I don’t understand how this has not been outlawed.

    • Yes this is one of 2 important point. Of course most of the most destructive “psychiatric treatments” are considered standard–not experimental. Although the Bill’s authors are undoubtedly well-meaning, it is based on a naivete about psychiatry. Lobotomies were done for years–they were not considered experimedntal.
      Second although Copycat’s point about Nuremberg is important, it must be qualified. While a dozen Dr Mengelle doctors were hung at Nuremberg 12,000 Nazis scientists were imported and set to work by the CIA (Operation Paperclip). Nuremberg has not placed any constraints upon CIA. The CIA admits that 36,000 subjects were given LSD w/o their knowledge, let alone consent. It was probably higher. It was banned in late 70s but it oinly went underground.
      In the last several months I have met many individuals who are targeted. Their brain are manipulated by directed energy weapons described by Robert Duncan, whistleblower–see his books on Amazon. These person are at the mercy of psych-ops. See http://www.Freedomfchs.org or read 1996 by Gloria Naylor.
      Thomas Szasz said child psychiatry itself is child abuse and should be banned. That would be one step in the right direction. Then abolish the other intrusive agencies of the State.
      Seth Farber, Ph.D
      http://www.sethHfarber.com

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