PUBLIC HEARINGS IN NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL ACS DRUG EXPERIMENTS ON BLACK & LATINO CHILDREN IN FOSTER CARE THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2005, AT 10:00 AM CITY HALL, DOWNTOWN NYC
The New York City Administration for Children's Services (ACS) has admitted that at least 465 allegedly HIV positive children in foster care were used to test highly toxic and possibly lethal experimental AIDS drugs during the1980s and 1990s. ACS Commissioner John Mattingly has stated that the agency has hired an outside research firm (Vera Institute of Justice) to investigate.
The British Broadcasting Company documentary entitled Guinea Pig Kids exposed the scurrilous relationship between ACS, Incarnation Children's Center (which is owned by the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York), Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, and several pharmaceutical companies including Glaxo Smith Kline, and their abuse of innocent primarily Black andLatino children in foster care for profit. This heinous act was a clear violation of their human rights.
The December 12th Movement and the Millions for Reparations organizationslaunched a campaign in December 2004 demanding an immediate halt to theexperiments and a public hearing in the City Council and State Assembly. The City Council Public Hearings will take place on Thursday, May 5, 2005 at10:00 AM, at City Hall, Downtown New York City. For Information call (718) 398-1766. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------- FACT SHEET ON ACS ABUSE OF BLACK & LATINO CHILDREN AS GUINEA PIGS FOR TESTING OF AIDS DRUGS
January 2004: Investigative Reporter Liam Scheff publishes The House that AIDS Built. The article documents ACSTs (NYC Administration for Childrens Services) use of Black and Latino children in foster care asguinea pigs for trials of toxic AIDS drugs. Drugs were given to children as young as 1 month old. The article cites deaths of at least four of thechildren at the Incarnation Childrenâ?Ts Center (ICC), the main site of the testing, which is run by the Catholic Archdiocese of New York. The trials went on from the mid-1980s through the beginning of this century.
March 2004: Vera Sharav of the Alliance for Human Research Protection contacts several Federal agencies to get them to investigate and put a halt to ACSs violations of Federal regulations for the protection of children as research subjects. March-June, 2004: ACS, in a series of private correspondences in response to inquiries from City Councilmen deBlasio and Perkins, assures them that ACS had done nothing wrong. No further inquiry was made or public hearingdemanded by the Councilmen.
December 2004: The December 12th Movement (D12) and Millions for Reparations (MFR) became aware of the issue through a newly-released BBC documentary, Guinea Pig Kids, which documented the abuses of ICC. The twoorganizations viewed health care in the Black and Latino communities in general and the human rights violations suffered by the children at ICC, in particular, as an important part of the demand for Reparations. They immediately launched a multi-faceted campaign to inform the community ofthis issue. It included: weekly demonstrations in front of ICC; presentationof a letter to the Commissioner of ACS requesting answers to specific questions on what had occurred at ICC; a letter writing campaign to local,state and federal elected officials demanding that they hold public hearingson these drug trials.
January 27, 2005: A representative of D12 met with Councilman deBlasio,Chair of the General Welfare Committee, in an unsuccessful attempt to havehim hold a public hearing on the ICC. February 8, 2005: In response to D12's December 30th letter to ACSCommissioner Mattingly, ACS called for a meeting. It was held between representatives of D12, MFR, the Center for Law and Social Justice, Young,Gifted and Black and a high level delegation of ACS and the NYC Law Department.
The community representatives left dissatisfied. Many of theirquestions went unanswered, including: i) what were the causes of death ofchildren in the clinical trials; and ii) what were the long-term sideeffects of the drugs used. ACS told them that 76 children had been involvedin clinical trials and promised to get back to them after they had compiled the information which had been originally requested in December, 2004.April 22, 2005: ACS, which had still not gotten back to D12 and MFR,announced that it had hired an outside research facility to investigate them. It also announced that 465 children, not the 76 they told us inFebruary, had been â?oguinea pigs.â?? The actual number may grow.
April 24, 2005: D12 and MFR hold press conference on steps of City Hall,with Councilmen Barron and Perkins, as well as Vera Sharav. CouncilmandeBlasio, through Councilman Barron, announces that he has finally decided to hold a hearing. MFR, D12 and Parents in Action call for a city-wide demonstration at ICC on April 30th to Shut It Down May 5, 2005 - NYC Council holds Public Hearing on Administration forChildren's Services and the testing of experimental AIDS drugs on allegedly HIV positive children in foster care.
MILLIONS FOR REPARATIONS: 456 Nostrand Avenue; Brooklyn, NY 11216; (718) 398-1766 (tel); (718) 623-1855 (fax);
The House That AIDS Built
Liam Scheff
This article deals with pharmaceutical abuse
in a children’s home in NYC. This is a most controversial story – however, it’s entirely based in fact and good reporting. I hope you’ll find it as compelling and shocking as I did investigating it.
This piece was investigated and written in summer / winter 2003 and published in January 2004.
Liam Scheff. E-mail : liamscheff@yahoo.com
Introduction:
In New York’s Washington Heights is a 4-story brick building called Incarnation Children’s Center (ICC).
This former convent houses a revolving stable of children who’ve been removed from their own homes
by the Agency for Child Services. These children are black, Hispanic and poor.
Many of their mothers had a history of drug abuse and have died. Once taken into ICC, the children become subjects of drug trials sponsored by NIAID (National
Institute of Allergies and Infectious Disease, a division of the NIH), NICHD (the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development) in conjunction
with some of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies – GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Genentech, Chiron/Biocine and others.
The drugs being given to the children are toxic – they’re
known to cause genetic mutation, organ failure, bone marrow death, bodily deformations, brain damage and fatal skin disorders. If the children refuse the drugs, they’re held down and have them force fed. If the children continue to resist, they’re taken to Columbia Presbyterian hospital where a surgeon puts a plastic tube through their abdominal wall into their stomachs.
From then on, the drugs are injected directly into their intestines.
In 2003, two children, ages 6 and 12, had debilitating strokes
due to drug toxicities. The 6-year-old went blind. They both died shortly after. Another 14-year old died recently. An 8-year-old boy had two plastic surgeries
to remove large, fatty, drug-induced lumps from his neck.
This isn’t science fiction. This is AIDS research. The
children at ICC were born to mothers who tested HIV positive, or who themselves
tested positive. However, neither parents nor children were told a crucial fact
-- HIV tests are extremely inaccurate.(1,2) The HIV test cross-reacts
with nearly seventy commonly-occurring conditions, giving false positive results.
These conditions include common colds, herpes, hepatitis, tuberculosis, drug
abuse, inoculations and most troublingly, current and prior pregnancy.(3,4,5)
This is a double inaccuracy, because the factors that cause false positives
in pregnant mothers can be passed to their children – who are given the
same false diagnosis.
Most of us have never heard this before. It’s undoubtedly
the biggest secret in medicine. However, it’s well known among HIV researchers
that HIV tests are extremely inaccurate – but the researchers don’t
tell the doctors, and they certainly don’t tell the children at ICC, who
serve as test animals for the next generation of AIDS drugs. ICC is run by Columbia
University’s Presbyterian Hospital in affiliation with Catholic Home Charities
through the Archdiocese of New York.
Sean and Dana Newberg are two children from ICC. Their mother
used drugs and was unable to care for them properly, so they were raised in
foster care, until their great-aunt Mona adopted them. Mona Newberg is a teacher
in the New York Public Schools, and has her Master’s degree in Education.
She adopted the children when Sean was three and Dana was six. She was already
raising their older brother, who was never given an HIV test or AIDS drugs.
He’s now grown, healthy and serving in the Navy.
Their mother used heroin and crack cocaine since she was
a teenager. She was given an HIV test in the late 80s and tested positive. “She
had three children before Sean and Dana,” said Mona. “Nobody told
us that the test cross-reacted with drug abuse, let alone pregnancy. It’s
not a valid test.”
Because of the test result, the doctors at Columbia Presbyterian
put Sean on AZT monotherapy when he was 5 months old. Use of AZT monotherapy
is now considered malpractice because it can cause debilitating, fatal illness
including fatal anemia.
Dana spent her first four years at Hale House, a NY orphanage
for children whose parents abused drugs. Hale house was participating in an
AZT drug trial when Dana was there. “We can’t get the records from
Hale House, so I don’t know what happened there,” Mona said. “I
never gave Dana the drugs after I got her, but I know she arrived with a filled
prescription for AZT.”
Sean has been on life support twice as a result of the AIDS
drug Nevirapine. Dana was put on AIDS drugs in 2002, even though she wasn’t
sick. Since being put on the drugs, Dana has developed cancer.
Both children have been taken into ICC and kept there against
their will and against Mona’s wishes for one reason – Mona has questioned
the safety of the AIDS drugs AZT, Nevirapine and Kaletra and stopped giving
the drugs when they made the children ill. In the summer and fall of 2003, I
visited Mona, Sean, Dana and ICC. I spoke with Mona about her experience and
her decision. (The names of Sean, Mona and Dana are aliases which they requested
to protect their identities, but their stories are accurate and unaltered).
Liam Scheff: What led you to question the safety of the
drugs?
Mona: When I first got Sean at three years old, he was a vegetable.
He’d never eaten solid food. He had a feeding tube that went through his
nose into his stomach. AIDS medications change the taste buds. AZT, especially,
makes it so kids can’t stand the taste of food and won’t eat. The
nurses fed Sean AZT, Bactrim and six cans of Pediasure a day through this tube,
which stayed in his stomach for over two years. Nobody ever bothered to change
it.
When I got Sean, I continued to give him the drugs as prescribed
for about 5 months. But after each spoonful, he got weaker. I thought, wait
a minute – this stuff is supposed to be making him better, why is he getting
worse?
Sean had night sweats and fevers 24 hours a day. He had no
energy. He couldn’t play. He couldn’t get up for ten minutes without
lying down. Nurses came regularly to give him blood infusions to manage the
AZT anemia. After the infusions, he’d be nearly comatose for two days.
He was like a limp doll.
Every time I gave Sean the drugs, he got weaker and sicker.
I didn’t know what to do but I didn’t want him to die. So I stopped
everything that appeared to be killing him. I stopped the AZT. I stopped the
Bactrim. I stopped the nurse from coming to give the infusions.
It wasn’t immediate, but Sean started to improve. His
fevers subsided. He could eat. He gained weight. Within a couple months, he
was actually running and playing with the other children. Sean was born with
a chronic lung condition because of his mother’s drug use, but even his
lungs improved. I couldn’t believe it. When Sean was born, the doctors
told his mother that he was going to die. They told her to buy a coffin for
him. He barely survived. When I took him off the drugs, he was healthy for the
first time in his life.
I was so happy, I told everyone - including the doctors and
nurses - what had happened. I didn’t know not to. When the hospital found
out I wasn’t giving him the drugs, they contacted Agency for Child Services
(ACS). An ACS worker came to my door, and told me I had to register the kids
with an infectious disease doctor – Dr. Howard at Beth Israel. I was taking
Sean and Dana to a Naturopathic MD, and they were both healthy and strong. I
told them that we had a doctor. They said, “Too bad, you have to see Dr.
Howard now.”
Howard was terrible for the children. He ignored the only thing
that actually bothered Sean – his lung condition, and insisted that he
go on a new drug for HIV. He said, “There’s a new miracle drug.
It just came on the market. I guarantee if you give it to Sean, you’ll
watch the miracle happen”.
LS: What was the miracle drug?
Mona: Nevirapine. Howard put Sean on Nevirapine. Sean’s health
immediately deteriorated. He got sicker, his lungs congested, he lost weight,
his cheekbones sunk, his liver and spleen started to go. Six months after he
went on Nevirapine, he had complete organ failure. He was on life support for
two weeks at Beth Israel Hospital. Then I did some research on Nevirapine, and
found out that it caused organ failure and death. When Sean finally got out
of the hospital, Howard discharged him on hospice care. Six months earlier,
he was healthy. Now they were telling me to prepare for his death.
Once I got him home, I stopped giving Sean the Nevirapine,
and he was able to eat again. He started to gain some weight back. Sean was
so weak after being on life support, with all those tubes in him. He’d
gotten so thin. But he finally started to recover. When I took Sean to Dr. Howard,
he was always surprised to see that Sean was improving. Howard would ask me,
“Are you sure you’re giving him the medication, Mrs. Newberg?”
LS: In times of improvement, he suspected that you weren’t
giving Sean the Nevirapine?
Mona: Right. He only worried when Sean wasn’t sick! AIDS doctors
always think there’s something wrong if you’re not dying.
After that Howard started keeping Sean in the hospital for
longer periods of time for the lung problems we used to treat at home. Howard
kept Sean for 25 days and fed Sean the Nevirapine himself. Sean ended up back
in intensive care with organ failure. He was placed on life support for two
weeks. He got a hospital staph infection because Howard wouldn’t let him
leave. He was eight years old, and just wanted to come home.
A month later, the hospital finally discharged him. Then ACS
called me for a meeting. The ACS worker told me I should put Sean into Incarnation
Children’s Center until he was stronger. They told me that ICC was this
wonderful place. They said in four months he’d be strong enough to come
back home. ICC took Sean off the Nevirapine and put him on Viracept, Epivir,
Zerit and Bactrim. Sean improved off the Nevirapine, but the new drugs definitely
made him sick – just not as badly. He had trouble walking, and his arms
and legs got even thinner.
I visited Sean at ICC for five months. Then, when I wanted
to bring him home, they said, “We don’t recommend that Sean leave
here. You have a reputation for not giving meds.”
LS: ICC refused to let Sean come home?
Mona: Right. They kept him for a year and a half. I had to get a lawyer
to get him out.
LS: What was it like for Sean at ICC?
Mona: There were children in wheelchairs, on crutches, with deformations.
There were AZT babies. Their heads have a different shape, with the eyes spaced
wide and sunken in. The drugs cause severe developmental problems. Many children
have misshapen, weak limbs and distended bellies. Many are learning disabled.
The kids at ICC are constantly medicated with all kinds of drugs. When children
refuse the drugs the nurses hold them down and force feed them. Sean wanted
to get the hell out of there.
During my visits I noticed that many children at ICC were walking
around with tubes hanging from their undershirts, and I wondered what they were.
Then one day, I saw the nurse come in with a whole tray of medications and syringes,
and I watched her inject this medication into the tubes coming out of their
stomachs. I couldn’t believe it. I thought, my god, what’s going
on here?
Every child who had a stomach tube took their medication that
way, from the three-year-olds to the teenagers. It horrified me. I couldn’t
understand it. When I found out what was being done, I thought, surely this
must be illegal. There’s no way they could be doing this legally.
I expressed my concerns to Sean’s ACS case worker. I
said, “Do you know what they’re doing to those kids in there? This
reminds me of Nazi Germany.” He said, “They’re doing wonderful
things for these children.” I called Albany, the state capital, and talked
to Dan Tietz at the New York State Department of Health’s AIDS Institute.
He said, “What are we going to do if these little children refuse to take
the medication? How are we going to save their lives if we don’t perform
this operation?”
LS: Who performs this operation?
Mona: The children are sent to Columbia-Presbyterian for the operation.
The surgeons there do it.
I was at ICC one day, and saw a fourteen-year old boy named
Daniel refusing the pills. I actually saw him run from the nurse when she came
to give him his medication. He said, “The medication makes me sick and
I don’t want to take it.” His aunt was there, and she said, “The
medication makes him very ill.”
The ACS case worker, Wendy Wack, came in, and said to the aunt
very clearly, “Daniel has refused to take his medication. We’ve
changed it three times and he’s still refusing. Now, the only thing left
is the operation.” She said, “If you refuse the operation, we’ll
call Agency for Child Welfare – and take Daniel away from you.”
His aunt signed, and they took Daniel away. When he came back a few weeks later,
he had a tube in his stomach.
LS: Does Sean have the tube?
Mona: No. He doesn’t want that tube in his stomach. He’s been
there long enough to know you get the tube if you say no to the medication.
He’s terrified, so he never refuses the drugs.
The children at ICC who don’t have the tubes tend to
be a whole lot healthier and live a whole lot longer than the ones with the
tubes.
I was talking to a boy named Amir. He’s 6. His stomach
was so swollen. He said, “My stomach is swollen, it got big.” He
said, ”They cut me,” and he showed a little cut on his side. He’s
had a tube for a long time. Amir was an AZT baby. His face has that wider shape.
He also has lypodystrophy from the drugs. He has huge fat lumps on his back
and neck. They’ve taken him away for surgery twice but the lumps grow
back.
Sean’s little friend Jesus just died. He was 12. He had
a tube. He had a stroke from the drugs. There was a little girl, Mia. She had
a tube. She had a stroke and went blind. She died recently too. Carrie, a 14-year-old
girl died last year. She had a tube. There’s a three-year-old, Patricia.
She’s had a tube since she arrived. She’s going home with it in
her. I don’t think she’s going to make it.
I used to talk with the child care workers about the drugs.
I got to know all of them and they were all very friendly with me. I said, “These
drugs are killing the children.” They said, “We know.”
LS: They agreed with you?
Mona: Yes, but what can they do, they just take care of the kids. The doctors
and nurses give the medication. Telling the doctors that the drugs make you
sick doesn’t do anything. They just stare at you blankly. They don’t
care. Compliance is the main goal of ICC. All the kids in ICC come from families
who’ve failed to comply with the drug regimen.
LS: ICC is part of a national program running AIDS drug
trials. Have you ever signed a waiver permitting them to use your children in
a drug trial?
Mona: No, never. But ACS has signed for me when I didn’t want to give
Sean drugs. When I said, “No,” the ACS case worker grabbed the form
and said, “I’ll sign it. You don’t need to.” They’re
always switching medications – they never ask me if it’s okay.
Right now, most of the kids at ICC are on Kaletra. Kaletra
was on fast-track approval. It was released before testing was complete. But
they do know something about Kaletra. It causes cancer. It says on the label,
that this drug causes cancer in test animals.
I fought for a year to get Sean home. ICC wanted to put him
in a foster home where someone would be paid to feed him the drugs every day.
I got a lawyer and we finally got Sean out of there. My lawyer was able to get
Sean’s ICC medical records. He told me, “Sean was tortured at Incarnation.
He was tortured.”
Photos from ICC
The build up as we spread the horrific story
Latest news!
(Update 14th July 04)
The New York Press, (NYC's independent weekly) has picked up Liam
Scheff's investigation of Pediatric AIDS medical abuse.
The article reports the facts about AIDS drug toxicity, HIV test non-specificity,
and exposes the current practice of force-drugging children who refuse their
medication through surgically-implanted stomach tubes (g-tubes).
The paper deserves credit for its courage. The NY Press has a large and active
letters page. They will, no doubt, receive their share of "fan mail"
from the mainstream for publishing this.
Please let them know that their decision to publish this is appreciated,
and important to the health and welfare of people everywhere who are fighting
medical tyranny.
So many thanks to the NY Press.
Read "Orphans on Trial".
Story first published on dissidentaction.com
5th July 2004
In January, 2004, I published "The House That AIDS Built."
The story was picked up by several international papers, including the New York Post and the UK Guardian, and was reprinted throughout the world on the world wide web.
German journalist Torsten Engelbrecht read the story and formulated a series of questions for Columbia Presbyterian, the hospital which presides over ICC. He was answered by a PR firm. The answers were dishonest and unsatisfactory. What follows is a response to and a dissection of their
answers using NIH documents, clinical trials, interview material, Medline
articles and Department of Health statistics. Given the material provided here, it is clear that the practice of surgical forced-drugging of HIV positive children with toxic compounds is ongoing, in violation of the rights of wards of the state, and must be addressed immediately.
Read the result of this additional research:
"The ICC Investigation Continues.
Hospital PR firm gives insufficient response to ICC Investigation"
Patricia Nell Warren, author of fiction
bestsellers like The Front Runner, also writes provocative commentary has
recently taken up Liam Scheff's reporting.
Her article "Asking the Questions" is available
on
http://www.aumag.org/viewfinder/leftMay04.html What does it mean when a story about possible clinical
trial abuses hits the wire, but most news media ignore it? For years, CNN’s
Christiane Amanpour has been saying—not on CNN, of course—that
courageous reporting is vanishing from the U.S. major media.
March 2004.
Phase I Drug Trials Used Foster Care children in Violation of 45 CFR
46.409 and 21 CFR 50.56
http://www.ahrp.org/ahrpspeaks/HIVkids0304.html Vera Sharav of the Alliance for Human Research Protection (AHRP) has called
for a Federal investigation into Incarnation Children's Center, and the NIH's
Pediatric AIDS Clinical Trials program. The AHRP letter contends that Federal
Regulations regarding the use of children and wards are being violated.
April 2004
London Observer/Guardian Confirms "The House That AIDS Built"
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1185305,00.html The incarnation Children's Center story has again been picked up
and validated by another major paper - this time by Antony Barnett of the
London Observer.
New York Post Confirms "The House That AIDS Built"
Liam Scheff investigated and wrote "The House That AIDS Built" throughout
2003, and web-published it in 2004. In early February, 2004, Douglas Montero,
a columnist for the NY Post, contacted Scheff after reading the article. Soon
after, the Post printed (stole) Scheff's article in a tabloid format rewritten
by Montero, without a single mention of Scheff.
Two days after the intitial Post cover, Scheff was mentioned
in the Post as "a health advocate who investigated ICC and posted his findings
on the internet..."
Scheff is indeed a health advocate, but he is also an investigative
reporter whose previous work on politics, film and HIV/AIDS has been widely
read and praised. Scheff remains hard at work on this and other stories relating
to human, medical and civil rights. If you feel so inclined, please contact
the NY Post, thanking them for covering this important issue, and reminding
them that proper credit should be paid to Scheff and sites like altheal and
aras (the Alberta Reappraising AIDS Society), who had the courage to post
Scheff's story first, and honestly.
letters@nypost.com
AND 