Heightened Public Concern About Proposed Exclusions of Intelligence Surveillance/Criminal Justice/National Security-Related Activities from the Protections of the Common Rule
by Ramola D/The Everyday Concerned Citizen/Posted July 17, 2016
(With information, analyses, and reviews from Norman Rabin, Karla Smith, Cait Ryan, Nola Alexander, and others. Links and resources include those supplied in public comments by Margaret Zawodniak, Todd Giffen, Steven White, Jeffrey Kaye Ph.D.)
Informed Consent from human subjects was a primary subject of concern presented by activists at the recent May 18-19 meeting in Washington, DC, of SACHRP, the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Human Research Protection, and in several public comments submitted by human rights advocates and others online.
Those comments emphasized that Informed Consent needs to be made absolutely essential, and neither exempted nor excluded as currently proposed, in all Intelligence Surveillance, Criminal Justice, and National Security-related activities/research, particularly classified research.
Please note: Although a notice was recently released, on June 29, 2016, of a new report published by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, Medicine recommending that the September, 2015 NPRM should be withdrawn–
Congress Should Create Commission to Examine the Protection of Human Participants in Research; Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to Revise Common Rule Should Be Withdrawn
–the purpose of this article, and all Public Comment Summaries it links to, is to publicize and historically document for a larger public audience the expressed concerns, from the American public, about in-built waivers of Informed Consent being permitted via proposed exclusions (particularly for Military/Intelligence/National Security/Criminal Justice activities/research), in this current NPRM for the Common Rule.
It is also to be hoped that this extended public exposure will inspire serious consideration of these concerns and directly influence any final changes to the Common Rule, as part of the Rulemaking process described at SACHRP, on May 18, 2016 by Jerry Menikoff, Director, OHRP, and Executive Secretary, SACHRP:
“it is inappropriate for a change to suddenly come across that was not part of that discussion – a change to Final Rule should be a logical outgrowth of what was originally presented or something that was appropriately discussed as part of the Public Comment process – that is an appropriate restraint in terms of what the Government can [do] – so nothing new can be added that wasn’t discussed.” Jerry Menikoff, MD, JD, Director OHRP, Executive Secretary, SACHRP
SACHRP May 18-19 Meeting on NPRM for the Common Rule/Focus
SACHRP Meeting, May 18, 2016
Following a period of public comment that closed Jan 6, 2016, this particular meeting of the 11-member strong SACHRP was partially focused on sharing analyses of public comments on the proposed changes to the Common Rule, reflected in the NPRM or Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) posted September 2015. NIH video coverage of these meetings may be found here: May 18 and May 19.
The Common Rule, which comprises Subpart A of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) 45, Section 46, establishing the Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects, is a modified version of the Belmont Report, formulated in 1979, by a National Commission set up to address human subject research protections, and only a distant cousin of the Nuremberg Code of 1947, or the World Medical Association’s Helsinki Declaration (since revised) of 1964, designed to protect all human subjects of medical research, and in particular hold sacrosanct the need to ensure their Informed Consent.
The US Government, with the leadership of SACHRP and OHRP, Office of Human Research Protections at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), is currently considering making changes to the Common Rule.
Present at the May 18 meeting, as self-introduced, were:
Nancy King from Wake Forest School of Medicine;
Reid Pierce from the University of Pennsylvania, Medical Geneticist;
Dan Nelson from the EPA;
Christina Heide. Health and Human Services, Office of Civil Rights, HIPAA;
Karen James, Department of Veterans Affairs;
Stephanie Bruce, Department of Defense;
Kevin Praska, FDA;
Ann Andrews for Department of Commerce and NIST;
Jonathan Green, Executive Chair, Washington University in St. Louis;
Holly Fernandez, Harvard Law School;
Owen Garrick, Clinical Research, Retiring SACHRP member;
Stephen Rosenfeld, Board Chair, IRB;
Diana Chinko, Three-Time Survivor Of Early Onset Breast Cancer,
Patient Advocate involved with Researchers/Funders
Nationally, and Los Angeles;
Cecelia Chirinos, OHRP;
Julia Gorey, OHRP (Executive Director, SACHRP);
Jerry Menikoff, OHRP (Executive Secretary, SACHRP);
and Jeffrey Botkin, University of Utah (Chair, SACHRP).
Adding particular poignancy to these discussions, also present at the meeting and offering public comment on both days were activists aiming to represent current-day non-consensual subjects of covert human experimentation today in the United States, who spoke strongly and emotionally against the advisability of compromising Informed Consent requirements for any category of research involving humans, including classified research. (Covered further below.)
Executive Summary Presented at SACHRP Meeting Avoids Addressing Public Concern About Intelligence Surveillance/Criminal Justice Exclusions
It is notable that the presentation of an Executive Summary of Public Comments by Lauren Hartsmith, JD, from the Division of Policy and Assurances at OHRP, failed to present public concern about exclusions for Intelligence Surveillance and Criminal Justice activities noted in written public comments.
Non-consensual experimentation activist Joan Dawson, stood up to question this exclusion (of discussion on proposed Intelligence exclusions in the NPRM) and was informed the decision was based “purely on numbers”.
Joan Dawson asks about criteria for exclusion of comments on Intelligence activities from SACHRPS’s Public Comment Summary
Ms. Hartsmith noted that high numbers of comments had been registered for other aspects of the NPRM while only close to 50 public comments had mentioned the Intelligence Surveillance exclusion, and 25 comments addressed the Criminal Justice exclusion.
Although OHRP Director Dr. Jerry Menikoff followed up to note that low numbers did not preclude discussion and consideration by the Committee of important issues in comments (while larger numbers on other aspects might indicate greater public concern on those aspects or institutional concern about regulatory burden and “decrease (in) their profits” regarding those aspects), these were non-specific remarks, not specifically referencing the comments on Intelligence Surveillance exclusions.
“In terms of how the comments are used, it is not just about numbers—this is a governmental process, the genuine goal of all the players is to produce good policy outcomes.
“…Bottom line, numbers are not necessarily the key thing, which is not to say that numbers do not matter.” Dr. Jerry Menikoff, Director, OHRP, Executive Secretary, SACHRP
A preliminary analysis performed by activists for victims of non-consensual experimentation (possibly conducted by classified research) offers further detail:
“We found 85 Public Comments which mentioned “Intelligence” (both victims and non-victims);
a subset of 57 were found that specifically mentioned “Intelligence Surveillance” (both victims and non-victims).
15 non-victims addressed Intelligence Surveillance (7 detailed objections; 8 briefly mentioned the exclusion)
26 victims addressed Intelligence Surveillance (Note: an additional 2 possible victims, 1 probable victim and 2 victim’s spouses also submitted comments addressing Intelligence Surveillance)
62-66 victims submitted comments to the NPRM (there were a total of 86 victim comments including multiple comments by the same person).
In Summary there were approximately 62-66 victims who commented during the NPRM, and 77-81 victims who commented during the ANPRM and NPRM combined.” Karla Smith and Norman Rabin, Authors, Victim Stakeholder Summary (described below)
(The ANPRM was the Advance Notice of the Proposed Rule Making, and was published in September 2011, followed by the Notice or NPRM in September 2015.)
Researcher and activist Karla Smith also offers a reminder that, post extensive public comment in 2011 at the President’s Bioethics Commission, the Commission publicly refused to hear any further testimony from people claiming non-consensual experimentation on their bodies, via a letter from Valerie Bonham, Executive Director of the Commission, a factor which affected the numbers of public comments on the NPRM:
“We had many fewer comments (for NPRM) than we did the Bioethics Commission because victims have given up. They are not getting a response. And they are not welcome at the Bioethics Commission.” Karla Smith, Public Comment at SACHRP, May 19, 2016
Valerie Bonham’s 2011 Letter Stating President Obama’s Bioethics Commission Declines Concern About Covert Non-Consensual Experimentation/Surveillance
Regardless of the numbers involved, close analysis of these particular public comments—comprising the bulk of this article–show that these proposed exclusions to the Common Rule strike at the very heart of meaningful, humane protections for human subjects, and seek to leave all Americans—and others, worldwide–completely vulnerable to exploitation by the “covered entities” of American military and intelligence agencies, in the name of national security, standard intelligence surveillance, and normative criminal investigation.
Given this country’s history of exploitative and abusive medical experimentation inclusive of the CIA’s MKULTRA abuses, the Guatemala STD experiments, and extreme CIA torture at Guantanamo, all “under cover” as above, this is an issue of vital importance today for all Americans, and citizens worldwide to get informed about.
New NPRM Exclusions Would Further Weaken Protections for Informed Consent in Classified Research
While the intent of the proposed Common Rule, as presented in the NPRM, is ostensibly to protect human subjects from exploitation and abuse while enrolled in research, among the concerning changes proposed is a listing of certain research-like activities as non-research (and therefore exempt from protection by the Common Rule), including (in a list among surveys and questionnaires, oral histories, journalism) Intelligence Surveillance activities, Criminal Justice activities, and National Security-related activities.
NPRM/Excerpt
As several public commenters note, these changes would not strengthen but explicitly roll back extant implied protections for human subjects in projects covertly or otherwise run by Intelligence, Justice, or Military agencies and contractors in the above categories. A range of institutions focused on defense, national security, homeland security, and criminal justice would stand to benefit from these broad exclusions of unspecified “activities” as not-research, as noted in NPRM language.
Public commenters note that essentially, it appears the NPRM seeks to re-classify research on human subjects being conducted or intended by such Military or Intelligence institutions as routine operation, and not-research.
This is highly concerning because it offers the possibility of shielding research as “activity” and becoming exempt from the Common Rule; researchers will no longer need to concern themselves with matters of Informed Consent, respect for subjects, or letting them opt out—matters already unaddressed in current classified research, as claimed by those stating they are current-day victims of covert government programs.
NPRM/Excerpt
In the USA, basic requirements for Informed Consent, which once was an essential prerequisite to all medical research post-Nuremberg and post-revelations of inhumane Nazi experiments, have been watered down successively since, to the point where OHRP discussions now reframe the subject in terms of “regulatory burden.”
Opening remarks by Dr. Jerry Menikoff, Director of OHRP at the Department of Health and Human Services, and Executive Secretary, SACHRP, suggested that OHRP was not the only party behind the creation and wording of the NPRM, that policy decisions taken at a higher level also came into play (covered below).
Are Military/Intelligence Agencies Backseat-Driving the NPRM, SACHRP, & the Presidential Bioethics Commission?
Is there an intention behind proposed changes to the Common Rule to explicitly protect ongoing covert activities and research by Military and Intelligence groups—and indeed the precise non-consensual neuro-experimentation and Directed Energy Weapons field-testing that activists are presenting testimony about?
Several factors point to this disturbing possibility, and are considered below.
1. Late Inclusion of the Intelligence Surveillance Activities Exclusion in the NPRM
Noted in public comments are several peculiarities associated with the NPRM proposal to exclude Intelligence Surveillance activities from the protections of the Common Rule. One has to do with the sudden appearance of this proposal in the NPRM in September 2015.
Karla Smith notes, in her joint public comment with activist and researcher Norman Rabin, presented live at the May 19 meeting:
“The September 2011 ANPRM did not discuss or propose an Intelligence Surveillance Activities exclusion, however there were approximately 18-20 public comments to the ANPRM which expressed concerns plausibly related to non-consensual hi-tech and/or military or intelligence or classified human research/experimentation.
“…The ANPRM was followed by a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) in September 2015. Though no comments to the ANPRM were found proposing or discussing an Intelligence Surveillance Activities exclusion, the NPRM contained a proposal to exclude unspecified Intelligence Surveillance Activities (NPRM at § __.101(b)(1)(vi)). These activities include defense or national security-related activities.” Karla Smith, Public Comment at SACHRP, May 19, 2016
(Also, please see Question 1 of 4, in Norman Rabin’s public comment below, questioning the late addition of the Intelligence Surveillance exclusion, without any prior public discussion.)
Why were Intelligence Surveillance activities—not mentioned in the earlier Advance Notice–suddenly proposed, 4 years later, for explicit Common Rule exclusion from human subject protections?
Could it be that increasing visibility of covert, non-consensual human experimentation programs through increasingly credible–and cumulative–victim testimonials online these days have caused agencies pursuing secrecy to seek new, unbreachable means of cover?
2. “Various Federal Agencies Responsible for NPRM/Changing the Common Rule”
Public commenters have noted that the language of the NPRM seems too quick to excuse the closed, covered, classified actions of Intelligence Surveillance and Criminal Justice as legitimate, routine, authorized activity, and not research. (Public comments covered further below.)
NPRM/Excerpt
Joint Federal Creation of NPRM Language: At the SACHRP May 18 Meeting, OHRP remarks implied there was joint strategizing and management of the proposed Common Rule document by various un-named Federal agencies.
Jerry Menikoff, Director, OHRP, noted that “many Federal players were involved in creating this document,” and statements of rule or policy in the document reflected “decisions already made at higher levels regarding what a particular policy decision would or would not be.”
Was this a veiled reference to Military/Intelligence Agency oversight of policies and process?
“I do want to say, often, at least some people act as if OHRP ran the show, and it’s OHRP’s decision on all of these points. In fact it’s been a complicated document, many players within the federal government have been involved. Decisions were made by various people who have various authorities and make these decisions and it has not been that OHRP gets its call on all of this. And I mean that is just the nature of the beast.” Jerry Menikoff, Director, OHRP; Executive Secretary, SACHRP
NPRM/Excerpt
Listed on the HHS website and included in the NPRM is a list of Federal agencies associated with the Common Rule, who may have helped in creation of the wording in this document, including the Departments of Labor, Justice, Defense, Agriculture, Energy, Education, Commerce, Homeland Security, US AID, EPA, SSA, and NASA, among others. Raising the question: Do all of these Federal departments actually engage in human subject research? Apparently they all have an interest.
Joint Federal Analysis of Public Comment: While presenting the analysis of public comment, Lauren Hartsmith also mentioned that OHRP “took the lead in analysis, but they also had input from other Federal players as well.”
It is telling therefore that analysis of comments on the Intelligence Surveillance and Criminal Justice exclusions was excluded from the day’s presentation.
Was the Military/Intelligence/Justice intent here perhaps to maintain a distant silence on these vitally important matters of national interest, just to not draw attention to the important and insistent issues of Informed Consent and ongoing covert human experimentation being raised by public comment on these exclusions?
Mention of Confidential Government Discussions: In addressing issues of procedure past this meeting in finalizing changes to the Common Rule, Jerry Menikoff mentioned confidential Government discussions before Congressional procedures could follow to turn proposals into Federal Regulation and law. There was mention of the Rule being finalized and submitted in September 2016 before the next SACHRP meeting in October.
Sample Comment, SACHRP Summary of Public Comments/May 18, 2016
“This was public, in the Unified Agenda with a September 2016 date. It’s been in the Unified Agenda many times before, dates have been changed, but there’s a desire to move this thing forward.”
“The final Rule will be a document in many ways similar to the NPRM in that it will point out, discuss the public comments, and it will respond to the public comments. Sort of probably a fine art in which different lawyers will I guess agree in terms of to what level of detail you go into in terms of responding to the public comments, but yes, that is a requirement and it will be done when a final rule, if and when a final rule is announced.
“In terms of…the legislative end of things, I mean, the Legislature is open for Congress to do what it wants to do.
…In terms of my involvement, you know, involvement of the Executive branch with the Legislative branch is a complicated thing and my understanding is, there are actually to some degree confidentiality issues about what I should not or should be talking about, it’s not like there are a lot of interactions but it’s certainly open for Congress to do what Congress may or may not want to do in terms of getting involved in this topic and if they want to pass laws, it’s no different than any other area.
There are restraints in terms of there is a Department of Health and Human Services policy that we’re not supposed to be talking about the deliberations in terms of once public comment is done what the government is thinking about in terms of what the final rule might be. We’re just not allowed to talk about that.” Jerry Menikoff, Director, OHRP; Executive Secretary, SACHRP
3. Information on Acknowledged, Ongoing CIA Research Not Provided to the President’s Bioethics Commission Either
Relevant to this discussion on the NPRM, it is interesting to note that the CIA has offered two late acknowledgments to the President’s Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues (PCSBI), one that yes, they are conducting research domestically within the United States, and two, that no, they are not providing further detail on this research because the information is “confidential,” although not classified.
“Confidential” information, by CIA standards, from various sources online, appears to be related to levels of CIA Security clearance, implying information that poses “risks” to national security if divulged, but not “grave damage” as “Secret” information, nor “exceptional threat” as “Top-Secret” information.
The public comment presented by Karla Smith (posted separately here) makes note of a letter dated November 15, 2011, sent by Associate Deputy Director, CIA, V. Sue Bromley to Amy Gutmann, Chair, Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues (PCSBI), footnoted in the updated 2012 version of their 2011 report MORAL SCIENCE/Protecting Participants in Human Subjects Research, pointing to the domestic nature of CIA research:
“The CIA confirmed that all CIA-sponsored human subjects research is conducted in the United States – not abroad…’” End note 10 on page 172 of the updated June 2012 version of Moral Science.
Moral Science/Excerpt, Page 160
The CIA did not report project-level data (on human subjects) to the Commission in 2011 when requested, a fact noted in Moral Science as N/R or Not Reported in tables from the Research Project Database (RPD), and acknowledged with this comment:
“The Human Subjects Research Landscape Project does not provide a robust understanding of research that was not reported because it is classified or because of national security concerns.” Moral Science, Page 170
The full end-note 10, linked to the above statement (emphases below mine) may be of interest, particularly to those Americans alleging non-consensual experimentation on their bodies, plausibly in covert, classified-research projects.
“For example, the CIA did not submit project-level data to the RPD because “the application by the C.I.A. of certain research results may implicate intelligence sources and methods, and thus cannot be discussed in the public domain.” Letter from V. Sue Bromley, Associate Deputy Director, Central Intelligence Agency to Amy Gutmann, Ph.D., Chair, Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. (November 15, 2011). The CIA confirmed that all CIA-sponsored human subjects research is conducted in the United States – not abroad. CIA personnel also met with Commission staff to discuss the CIA’s human subjects research portfolio and made records available to appropriately cleared Commission staff. In addition, the Department of Energy provided de-identified data about three human terrain mapping projects that have not been accounted for in the RPD.”
It is worthwhile to reiterate here that the CIA is confessing to conducting research inside the USA, on human subjects, meaning, Americans—which is more than is publicly divulged by the CIA, on FOIA requests, as this writer can attest:
FOIA Request Report: CIA Unable to Confirm Informed Consent in Any Open Human Subject Programs and Research Using Directed-Energy Neuroweapons in the USA
And that the CIA, while apparently sharing some information with Commission staff, refuses to publicly offer details of this human subjects research, although they say it is not classified, but “confidential,” and notably, that “research results” involving this human subjects research being conducted secretly within the United States may implicate “intelligence sources and methods,” which makes it necessary to keep secret.
This information in itself would be worth exploring further, particularly since alleged experimentation being reported today attests to no less than precisely that human brains—people’s own private storehouses of intelligence—are being invaded and remotely influenced or “interrogated” with neuro-weaponry and neuro-implants, and that “non-lethal” radiation weaponry is being used in tandem covertly on bodies, possibly to assist in covert, trauma-based neuro-modification and “interrogation” programs.
If these are the “intelligence sources and methods” of 21st-century interrogation that the CIA wishes to keep secret, then perhaps the entire classification category of “sources and methods of gathering intelligence” should be publicly and stringently questioned.
Clearly their misstep of not obtaining Informed Consent from American experimentees first makes it inevitable that non-consensual experimentation on Americans using these sources and methods should eventually bring these particular sources and methods to light, as current public comment from victims makes evident.
Executive Order 12333/CIA Website
Other non-consensual CIA research on human subjects that Americans will not soon forget is MK ULTRA. And today’s victims aver no less of a holocaust on their bodies and brains in stringent and inhumane experimentation than a new MK ULTRA.
4. SACHRP stepping away from responsibility for Intelligence Surveillance exclusion
Also noteworthy is the fact that SACHRP, whose stated intention is “to advise the Secretary on how to improve the quality of the system of human research protection programs, including the responsibilities of investigators, institutional review boards (IRBs), administrators, and institutional officials, and the role of the Office for Human Research Protections and other offices within the Department of Health and Human Services”, appears to be disavowing itself of any responsibility with regard to Intelligence Surveillance research or “activities”:
“At the December 2015 SACHRP meeting, SACHRP noted that there is public concern about the Intelligence Surveillance proposed exclusion but stated that they do not have the expertise to provide commentary. SACHRP encouraged additional public justification for and description of this exclusion.” Victim Stakeholder Summary (described further below)
This was also noted by SACHRP in their own public comment on the NPRM:
“SACHRP notes there is public concern about this proposed exclusion, but SACHRP does not have the expertise to provide commentary. SACHRP encourages additional public justification for and description of this exclusion.” Victim Stakeholder Summary, Intelligence Comments, Non-TI (described further below)
Who would have the expertise then, if not SACHRP? The specific Government agencies—Military, Intelligence, Justice–potentially requesting and impacted by this proposed Intelligence Surveillance exclusion did not publicly respond to this SACHRP invitation.
“Notably, we did not find any comments that offered the perspective of a current or former Government person or entity who explained specifically why the proposed exclusion would be helpful as a future government policy.” Karla Smith, Public Comment at SACHRP, May 19
Implications: To conclude this section on possible behind-the-scenes management of the NPRM, public discussion of the Intelligence Surveillance exclusions, SACHRP, and the President’s Bioethical Commission, an added concern must be noted, given the numbers of people coming forward as non-consensual victims of classified research today:
If the new Common Rule continues on this path and fully excises all classified research being conducted by Defense, Justice, National Security, or Intelligence agencies from needing to be accountable to or to respect the requirements of the Common Rule in the protection of human subjects, would this also be a way to justify past and currently-extant non-consensual human experimentation that is being widely and insistently reported today, but which these groups haven’t owned up to yet?
Public Comments on Intelligence Surveillance Exclusions Independently Analyzed by Non-Consensual Experimentation Victim Activists
The information below relies in great part on two important analyses of these public comments, submitted to SACHRP by researchers Norman Rabin, Karla Smith, and Cait Ryan: a two-part Victim Stakeholder Summary described as representing “the victims of ongoing Non-Consensual Human Research/Experimentation, plausibly related to the testing of Classified Intelligence Surveillance technologies and/or methods including Remote Weapons testing, Neurotechnologies, and other technologies”.
This Summary, with Norman Rabin, author, reminds SACHRP of the Stakeholder landscape for the NPRM:
“The September 8, 2015 NPRM…has among its stakeholders: the general Public; persons and institutions conducting or likely to conduct future human subject research; and, persons who are currently, or who have been Human Subjects of Human Research, or persons likely to be participants in future Human Research.
“Most prominent and numerous among consensual or non-consensual human subjects who submitted Public Comment to the NPRM, and/or to the preceding ANPRM, are citizens who are victims of alleged apparent non-consensual human experimentation, mainly alleged testing of technology which is plausibly related to the testing of Intelligence Surveillance technologies and methods.” Victims Stakeholder Summary, Intelligence Comments, Non-TI
The term “Targeted Individual” or “TI” which has entered the public lexicon is also used here to denote those claiming victimization by such technology experimentation.
The Victim Stakeholder Summary is divided into two parts, one collecting, analyzing, and presenting comments on the Intelligence Surveillance exclusion from Non-Victim or Non-TI public commenters, and one presenting comments from Victims or Tis.
Describing the concerns of this group in a letter directed to SACHRP, Norman Rabin wrote:
“Please be clear to understand, and to assure action or to urge action, reflecting that:
Our Ongoing Injustice Issue alleges a Large Scale Ongoing, Human Research/ Experimentation Program, which subjects citizens to Severe violations of Human Rights and the most basic, and fundamental Constitutional Rights, including daily liberty, the security of one’s own person and privacy of their body and brain, and freedom from repeated Cruel and/or Inhumane Treatment. This Program is alleged to have 500 to 2000 or so Ongoing victims across the U.S.”
..Because our Stakeholders seem to have been ignored in the Governmental Public Summaries of the ANPRM, it is important for our Stakeholder Summary to be clearly presented to OHRP, and to the Rulemaking, and to SACHRP, so that the very epitome of Rights Violations and Wrongdoing in the name of “Human Research” will not continue to occur. Norman Rabin, Letter to Julia Gorey, Executive Director, SACHRP, May 11, 2016
It must be stressed here that the “victims” this Summary calls attention to are the hundreds and thousands of Americans and citizens worldwide who have been coming forward over the past few decades to report experiences of being experimented upon, with visual and documented evidence of repeated assaults on their bodies and brains with electromagnetic signals of various kinds, including high-powered microwaves, and radiometric and toxicological evidence of non-consensual implantation with RFID chips, bio-MEMs, neuro-implants, and nano-technology.
The very fact that a single person, let alone hundreds or thousands, should come forward to report non-consensual experimentation on their bodies with radiation weaponry or RFID chips should ring a sharp warning bell to all of humanity, that once again, classified, secretive, and abusive human experimentation is indeed taking place in our midst.
Concerns About Covert Intelligence/Justice Activities Evading Informed Consent Expressed By Universities, Advocacy Groups, Physicians, Attorneys, Psychologists
It is important to note first though that concerns about covert Intelligence and Justice surveillance activities weakening protections for human subjects come from a variety of sources, including universities, advocacy groups, physicians, psychologists, attorneys, and concerned citizens.
Humans Harmed Significantly In Past Experiments Hidden by Secrecy and “National Security”
Notable public comments include those of Jeffrey Kaye, Ph.D, psychologist, blogger, and journalist, who has addressed torture in both his psychotherapy practice and writing, and submitted a 7-page comment with 2 pages of footnotes. He is unequivocal in his recommendation that the NPRM’s “intelligence surveillance” proposal, as also “criminal justice” proposed exclusions, and changes to federal policy regarding prisoners be “soundly rejected”:
“Currently, the Department of Justice, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG), and the intelligence agencies that operate under the umbrella of the Department of Defense, are all regulated by 45 CFR 46, and protection of human subjects falls under the Common Rule. There is good reason historically for this, as government agencies, often under the auspices of “national security,” failed to protect human beings who were harmed significantly under experiments undertaken by such agencies.”
“These agencies act under a veil of secrecy, and safeguards on potential misuse of actions considered research, as defined, or even potentially close to [being considered] research, should be strengthened, not weakened.” Jeffrey Kaye, Ph.D, Public Comment, NPRM
Dr. Jeffrey Kaye included in his comment mention of various recent reports and exposés calling into question the CIA/DoD recourse to Informed Consent waivers in human experimentation, including these:
Jason Leopold and Jeffrey Kaye, “Wolfowitz Directive Gave Legal Cover to Detainee Experimentation Program,” Truthout, Oct. 14, 2010;
A Navy slide presentation at DoD Training Day (PDF)–“DON Human Research Protection Program: What’s New -14 November 2006”;
American Servicemen Used As Guinea Pigs – Tests Revealed DOD Releases Project SHAD Fact Sheets”, (no date, but first webpage circa 2002);
and a report from the National Research Council (NRC) 2008 , “Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies”.
Specifically, Dr. Kaye noted that these reports and documents called attention to fairly recent—and egregious—Military lapses and failures of protection to human subjects, and a “history of attempts by DoD officials to push back against such restrictions,” as in the Guantanamo CIA torture experimentation programs on prisoners, under guise of testing interrogation techniques; in the 1970s Project Shad subjection of 4000 Navy men to dangerous chemicals, radioactive materials, and bacteria; and other notorious DOD Human Research programs, which took decades to be disclosed, after years of government denials. In Guantanamo, prisoner of war protections under the Geneva Conventions were stripped by the US Government using the 2002 Wolfowitz Directive for prisoners of the “war on terror”, and which led to the rephrasing of experimentation on Guantanamo prisoners as “enhanced interrogation.”
Additionally, Dr. Kaye notes that the NRC report on Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience found that the current system of human protections in military research does not safeguard against intentional wrongdoing, nor against the circumvention of research rules by setting up “convenient alternative frameworks (such as field testing).” Procedures and policies in place for conducting medical experiments on military personnel offer guidance, are formal, even “rigorous,” but are not clear enough to stop abuse from occurring. Ultimately, the report concludes that it is questionable whether such classified research is ethically sound at all, given its basic lack of transparency and public accountability.
Dr. Kaye stresses that these conclusions are particularly germane in light of the used phrasing of field testing, program evaluation, program assessment, and adjustment of technique to mask the extreme programs of experimentation and torture carried out at Guantanamo. The question of what constitutes research and what doesn’t should not be an issue for contention, he suggests.
“The point is that in the case of intelligence or national security agencies, especially those aspects covered by secrecy and classification, or that are “covert,” determinations of what is and what is not research, i.e., what can be covered or monitored by the Common Rule, what the “exceptions” are, is actually nonsensical. Either the coverage is complete and total, or it is not.” Jeffrey Kaye, Ph.D, Public Comment, NPRM
Commenting on the recently exposed CIA torture program, he points out that OHRP referred issues there back to the CIA:
“In the case of the CIA experimental torture or “enhanced interrogation” program, OHRP referred any research misdeeds back to the agency itself, in this case, back to the CIA. Such is their policy, which in this case is shown as grossly inadequate.
The fact remains, as documented in the recent release of the Executive Summary of the Senate Select Committee Intelligence report on the CIA’s torture program, that the plans for the “enhanced interrogation” program were formed in the same division of the CIA that ran the MKULTRA program.
Do we really want less, not more, safeguards on “intelligence surveillance” activities?” Jeffrey Kaye, Ph.D, Public Comment, NPRM
Dr. Kaye also cites a Jan 2015 letter by two United Nations Special Rapporteurs to the US Government on the role of health professionals in the CIA interrogation program and subsequent lack of investigation into allegations there of experimentation, not interrogation, as further support for restricting the CIA and other Intel agencies from conducting classified experimentation without Informed Consent, stating “the secrecy of the intelligence and covert operations world cannot allow any weakening of research or informed consent protections, as the agencies involved are without moral scruple, and have a long and even recent history of covering up misdeeds.”
“We are slipping away from the lessons learned from the Nuremberg trials.”
An attorney, William A. Brant, P.E., J.D., reminded the Committee of the primacy of lessons learned from the Nuremberg trials, and the absolute need for fully Informed Consent in all research involving humans:
“I am reminded of an August 15, 1997, article in the Annals of Internal Medicine (Vol. 127, No. 4) by Edmund D. Pellegrino, M.D. that I believe is applicable to my comments here.
“Nearly 70 years ago now, we learned of the moral depravity of the 20 Nazi physicians who were tried and convicted at Nuremberg for their part in human experiments at Auschwitz. The moral lessons learned seem obvious today and the crime so heinous that it seems silly to revisit now. Surely, those crimes and sheer lack of morality could never happen again.
“However, this is a dangerous conclusion, writes Dr. Pellegrino, and I agree. Moral lessons are quickly and easily forgotten. Medical ethics is more fragile than we think and is on a slippery slope. Moral reasoning based on defective premises tends to recur in new settings. Nazi physicians believed they were doing the right thing when they performed their experiments on humans.
“The first guiding principle of the Nuremberg Code mandated, “The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.”
“We are slipping away from the lessons learned from the Nuremberg trials. We are failing to respect the absoluteness of truly informed consent to strengthen regulatory mechanisms regarding research involving humans. Informed consent is the very bedrock of human rights. Truly informed consent is complete disclosure of every aspect and use of any biospecimen taken from a human. Anything less than truly informed consent violates what we learned from Nuremberg and basic human rights and dignity.
The proposed new rules should reflect truly informed consent.” William A. Brant, P.E. J.D., Public Comment, NPRM
Guatemala STD Experiments Suggest the Common Rule Must Be Strengthened Further
Calling to attention the recently-revealed Guatemala STD experiments where soldiers, prisoners, children, and mentally-ill patients were non-consensually experimented on and infected with syphilis and gonorrhea in the ’40s and ’50s in medical research approved by Johns Hopkins University and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, commenter Robert García, Founding Director and Counsel, The City Project, with the Latino Coalition for a Healthy California and Henry Dahl, asked that the Common Rule be strengthened to prevent future human rights violations.
“[Commenter] submits these public comments to revise the Common Rule by incorporating lessons learned from the US STD experiments in Guatemala in order to modernize, strengthen, and make more effective the Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects. LCHC serves as the leading voice for Latino health in California .. . Henry Dahl is an attorney with experience in international law and human rights.
The City Project represents the Catholic Archdiocese of Guatemala in the petition before the International Human Rights Commission against the US and Guatemala for crimes against humanity and human rights violations in the STD experiments.” Robert Garcia, Public Comment, NPRM
Two of the five points stressed by Robert Garcia asked explicitly that the Common Rule be strengthened further, not watered down:
“1. The Common Rule must explicitly recognize that non-consensual human medical experiments violate domestic and international laws.
“2. The content of the Common Rule must be strengthened to recognize that voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.” Robert Garcia, Public Comment, NPRM
Michael A. Rodriguez, MD, MPH, Professor and Vice Chair of Research, David Geffen School of Medicine (UCLA), also mentioned the Guatemala experiments and quoted from the Informed Consent requirement of the Nuremberg Code:
“The content of the Common Rule must be strengthened to recognize that voluntary and informed consent of the human subject is absolutely essential….[This means that the person involved] should have legal capacity to give consent; should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, over-reaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved, as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision. …Informed consent should be culturally and linguistically appropriate as well…Cases of human rights violation and unethical dealings of research conducted both abroad and in US, should include financial and emotional compensation for the subjects involved.” Michael A.Rodriguez, MD, MPH, Public Comment, NPRM
“Lousy with Loopholes”: Even Current Regulations for Classified Research Don’t Protect Informed Consent
Compliance with the extant Common Rule would imply the acquisition and documentation of Informed Consent from all those participating in research. Many observers note however that Intelligence agencies make use of loopholes to evade Consent requirements.
A comment submitted by Lizbet Boroughs for the Association of American Universities, and Association of Public Land Grant Universities noted that their member organizations found the exclusions unclear while observing that existing regulations “already allow department or agency heads to waive the applicability of some or all of the regulatory provisions for specific research activities or classes of research activities so long as OHRP is notified.”
The Victim Stakeholder Summary notes, on this comment, that, as per the current Common Rule, even notification to OHRP is not stringently required for waivers, particularly for classified Intelligence Surveillance activities, where agencies may also be held by classification law from publishing advance notice in the Federal Register or even providing notice to OHRP.
NPRM/Excerpt
Currently, the Central Intelligence Agency is supposedly required to, by Executive Order 12333, comply with all subparts of 45 CFR part 46, while the Department of Homeland Security, created after issuance of the Common Rule, is also required to apply all subparts of 45 CFR part 46 to its human research activities.
Robin Baker, supporter of The Electronic Frontier Foundation, relays the reality on the ground, quoting partially from their recent article examining protections, Human Research Loopholes: Alive and Well:
“The Common Rule is supposed to affirmatively protect us from the abuses of the future. However, the proposed regulation is lousy with loopholes, including ones that could exempt tracking online behavior and experiments related to intelligence activities.
“This federal policy purportedly binds the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and numerous other agencies, including the CIA and Department of Homeland Security (per Executive Order 12333). But as we’ve seen, these agencies are adept at honing in on small loopholes, so the proposed language needs a serious edit if it is going to provide any real protection.” Robin Baker, Public Comment, NPRM
Electronic Frontier Foundation: Exclusions “Building In a Gaping Breach for DHS and the CIA”
In their article, Human Research Loopholes: Alive and Well, The Electronic Frontier Foundation notes further that setting up an exclusion for Intelligence Surveillance merely widens the loophole.
“HHS proposes absolute ethics-review exemptions for “intelligence surveillance activities.” This would exempt actions “conducted to fulfill a department or agency’s legal mandate to ensure the safety and protection of the United States, its people, and its national security interests.” The government is professing to fence DHS and the CIA in through E.O. 12333, but they’re actually building in a gaping breach for them to stroll right back out through.”
In a 10-page comment meticulously examining and disputing various aspects of the proposed changes such as the “burdensome” nature of tracking individual biospecimens over a 10-year period, attorney Lee Tien of the EFF noted the peculiar fact that the NPRM does not seek public comment on “one of the more problematic exemption-decisions” about whether an activity is “an intelligence surveillance activity” and elaborated on why this was of critical importance.
“This determination should be subjected to a particularly stringent review process because of these agencies’ long histories abusing human subjects through creative interpretation of their mandates.”
Citing Project MKULTRA, The CIA’s Program of Research in Behavioral Modification, and the Memorandum from John C. Yoo, Re: Military Interrogation of Alien Unlawful Combatants Held Outside the United States, he questioned the NPRM’s assumption that the Common Rule currently already views classified research conducted by Intelligence/National Security agencies as lawfully mandated functions of their being and fundamentally not research, and thereby has always exempted them from Informed Consent:
“As a preliminary concern, the NPRM claims to be “codify[ing] the current interpretation of the Common Rule.” 80 FR 53950. It is unclear to us what authority supports this claim. This was not apparent from the ANPRM, and is not identified in the NPRM. Second, if HHS believes that this authority justifies the exemption, it should identify the reasoning it found persuasive when deciding to codify the existing interpretation. At present, it is doubtful that this claim is supported by the record.”
Lee Tien also questions the ambiguity in wording regarding “surveillance activities and related analyses” asking for clarification, since “this offers practically no limitation to an intelligence community with a history of expansively interpreting limited exemptions. There should be a discussion, a representative list, or at a minimum a modifier added here to give future courts or administrative law judges some sort of applicable standards to apply if a dispute arises.”
Lee Tien further examines the use of biospecimens permitted for use by Intelligence/Military institutions, noting:
“HIPAA’s national security exception currently permits doctors, hospitals, and any other “covered entity” to disclose individual health information “to authorized federal officials for the conduct of lawful intelligence, counter-intelligence, and other national security activities authorized by the National Security Act” without patient authorization.”
Given that, he notes clarification is in order: “(T)he NPRM should clarify that the exemption only applies to biospecimen analysis if the biospecimen was collected for that particular use, and by a “defense, national security, or homeland security authority solely for authorized intelligence, homeland security, defense, or other national security purposes.” 80 FR 53950. As presently written, the language appears to potentially allow for the “use” of a biospecimen that was “collected” by a different agency, “collected” for a different purpose, or both.
“It would be perverse indeed for the updated Common Rule to quietly facilitate the creation or expansion of a permanent intelligence community biospecimen bank.”
CIRCARE: “Exclusions show the Government declines its mandate to protect research subjects”
Attorney Gerald Schatz, speaking for CIRCARE, Citizens for Responsible Care and Research, and offering detailed human rights law analysis of the NPRM in an attached 82-page document that can be found here, recommended that all proposed exclusions should be stricken.
“Investigators are not disinterested and should not make the decision as to whether their projects do or do not come within the ambit of the Common Rule….
Intelligence and national security have been used to rationalize experiments with dubious surveillance technique research. James Risen, Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War (2014) Rachel Levinson-Waldman, What the Government Does with Americans’ Data, Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law (2013).
“And the intelligence and national security rationale has been used for research and experimentation with unlawful interrogation techniques. David J. Hoffman, et al. Report to the Special Committee of the Board of Directors of the American Psychological Association: Independent Review Relating to APA Ethics Guidelines, National Security Interrogations, and Torture (Sidley Austin LLC 2015); Senate Committee on Armed Services, Report: Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody, 110th Cong. 2d sess. (2008), passim; Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Report: Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program, S. Rep. 113-288, 113th Cong., 2d sess. (1914), passim; Steven H. Miles, Oath Betrayed: America’s Torture Doctors (2009) & Doctors Who Torture (2015).”
Citing the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Project which operated as training while building data banks, he notes:
“In the national security area the line separating operations from research subject to Common Rule scrutiny evidently has not been clear enough…. Where there is a Government-approved research purpose, there should be no categorical exclusions from the Common Rule. It is a failure of respect for persons and is contrary to law to deny the right, among others, to fully informed consent, in circumstances conducive to voluntariness, [and] contravenes the law.”
Responding to NPRM questions on whether proposed exclusions would limit the rights of human subjects or compromise scientific integrity, he notes:
“As a legal matter, rights do not change; they are inherent or recognized in positive law. The human subjects regulations cannot accord or diminish rights; they are supposed to be protective of rights. We point out above…the proposed categorical exclusions disregard rights and eliminate or weaken mandated protections.
“The proposed exclusions show that the Government declines its mandate to protect research subjects and that it defers to some researchers who consider themselves above ethical scrutiny.”
“Children are not a national security risk, they don’t require surveillance.”
Children’s inherent rights to privacy and their vulnerability to data collection, profiling, and surveillance as part of Intelligence agency research was examined in a comment by Cheri Kiesecki:
“Privacy is a fundamental human right, and should especially apply to our most vulnerable population, children. … The proposed regulations in “Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects” would allow tracking of online behavior and experiments related to intelligence activities. Existing loopholes in COPPA [Children’s (under age 13) Online Privacy Protection Act (a Congressionally mandated federal rule)] exempt[s] government entities and nonprofits, allowing these entities to profile and share, even sell children’s data.”
“Institutions and online applications that profile a child, collect personal behavioral, non-cognitive, predictive, pii data and share said data with agencies, vendors, researchers, and institutions outside of the classroom are not transparently communicating this activity to parents. Parents are largely unaware this data collection is happening.”
She suggested removing these loopholes, noting, “Children are not a national security risk, they don’t require surveillance. Children deserve a chance to live their life unfettered by a preconceived digital profile.”
American Psychological Association Approves Intelligence/Justice Exclusions Despite New Ban on APA Participation in National Security Interrogations
The American Psychological Association (APA) (comment excerpted below) pointed to confusion being engendered by new categories of exclusions and suggested that the basic definition of “research with human participants” instead be used to define exclusions. They also underscored the need for proposals in the NPRM to be more fully discussed and vetted by the research community, prior to finalizing the Common Rule.
Astonishingly however, and notably, without discussion of any kind whatsoever, they recommended, in summary, that the Intelligence Surveillance exclusion be retained, as also the Criminal Justice exclusion:
“Although APA is supportive of the proposal to expand the list of types of research activities that do not need to meet the requirements of the Common Rule, we believe that the addition of the new category of “exclusions” alongside the old and new exemptions is confusing. Only those activities that do not meet the definition of “research with human participants” (program improvement, quality assurance/quality improvement, public health surveillance, biographies, etc.) should be explicitly excluded from the requirements of the Common Rule.”
“In summary, our suggestion would be to retain §___.101(b)(1)(i) and (iii)-(vi) as well as §___.101(b)(2)(iii) and §___.101(b)(3) as exclusions.”
(The Intelligence Surveillance exclusion is NPRM at §___.101 (b)(vi); the Criminal Justice exclusion is NPRM at §___.101 (b)(iii))
Their conclusions re-state this opinion:
“We believe that many of the proposed revisions do indeed have the potential to reduce burdens on institutions, IRBs, and investigators, without compromising protections for human participants in research. These include the explicit exclusion of activities deemed not to be research.”
“Many, if not most, of these proposals, however, have yet to be fully developed and vetted with the research community, and as such, APA does not believe that the NPRM can be the penultimate step before a final rule is issued by the agencies that are signatories to the Common Rule.”
Regarding this APA comment, the Victim Stakeholder Summary authored by researcher and activist Norman Rabin provides a crucial contextualizing in light of the recent APA involvement in exposed CIA Torture which sought to shield itself initially as “Enhanced Interrogation”:
“Note: this Comment ought to be considered with an “*” [asterisk], regarding the “Intelligence Surveillance Activities” proposal, because APA was the subject of a widely Publicized Public Scandal:
–which reported upon APA (former APA officials’) involvement in Torture-related Prisoner Interrogations, and reported APA maintaining weakened policies for member behavior to satisfy Pentagon preferences; and,
–which reported upon APA organizational upheaval within the APA in response to it.
New York Times, July 10, 2015: Psychologists Shielded US Torture Program, Report Finds
Guardian, July 14, 2015: CIA Torture Report/ Three senior officials lose their jobs at APA after US torture scandal/ American Psychological Association framed the departures of its chief executive officer, deputy CEO and communications chief as ‘retirements’ and resignations
New York Times, August 8, 2015: Psychologists Approve Ban on Role in National Security Interrogations
Therefore, the Public might reasonably expect that the APA would have voiced concern, or at least acknowledged, that U.S. Defense and Intelligence activities not only have a questionable history of non-consensual human experimentation, but even relatively recently, U.S. Defense and Intelligence have shown their capacity to fail to be proactive in applying human subjects protections.
Note: Besides the Public Scandal involving questions of adherence to Ethics, and peripheral or closer involvement in U.S. Government torture–which are sufficient for this ‘asterisk’–part of the Public Scandal did in fact concern the human testing of Interrogation Techniques (as in fact is mentioned in filed Public Comment 0559 (of CIRCARE (excerpted above)).] Norman Rabin, Victim Stakeholder Summary, Non-TI comments
Constitutionally Protected Rights to Privacy, Dissent Challenged by Criminal Justice Exclusion
Commenting on another proposed area of weakening protections, Criminal Justice, where such Common Rule weakening is being sought in the “collection and analysis of data, biospecimens, or records by or for a criminal justice agency for activities authorized by law or court order solely for criminal justice or criminal investigative purposes,” Dr. Jeffrey Kaye questioned the nature of such research, citing the 2012 case of Dr. Susan Brandon’s “research” for the FBI-led High Value Detainee Interrogation Group, where her observations and analyses of would-be assassin Manssor Arbabsiar’s interrogations ended up actually being used in the prosecution against him.
Gerald Schatz of CIRCARE also questioned the nature of data collection protected under this exclusion, mentioning a 2013 Twitter-message study conducted by Indiana University exploring political and geospatial idea dispersion in the Occupy Wall Street movement “down to the individual, identified mobile telephone,” a study funded by DARPA, NSF, and the McDonnell Foundation, where researchers “perhaps assuming that Twitter users had agreed that anyone could use their data and metadata even if identifiable, could do what the U.S. Government itself was not supposed to do.” (Michael D. Conover et al. Geospatial Characteristics of a Social Movement Communication Network, PLOS ONE, http://www.plosone.org/artile/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0055957 (March 6, 2013).)
“Research, development, and testing of technologies and methods relating to law enforcement and penology should not be excluded from the Common Rule when they seek or acquire data or biological material for identifiable individuals and are funded as research.”
He also cited a Senate committee report examining surveillance versus dissent, pointing to inherent problems with data-collection via surveillance which encroach on privacy rights:
“Individual cases and programs of government surveillance which the Committee examined raise questions concerning the inherent conflict between the government’s perceived need to conduct surveillance and the citizens’ constitutionally protected rights of privacy and dissent. It has become clear that if some lose their liberties unjustly, all may lose their liberties. The protections and obligations of law must apply to all.” (Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Final Report: Foreign and Military Intelligence, Book I, 94th Cong., 2d sess. (1976) at 6-7.)
Referring to both criminal justice and intelligence and national security exclusions, he recommends:
“This proposed law enforcement and national security exclusions should be stricken as too fraught with ethical and legal hazard and with necessity to distinguish between research and operations.”
NPRM Includes Weakened Protections for Prisoners
In his remarks on the weakening of protections being sought also in the case of experimentation on prisoners (Subpart C of the Common Rule), Dr. Jeffrey Kaye notes the horrific abuse of prisoners in the ’60s and ’70s recorded by Allan Hornblum in Acres of Skin: Human Experiments at Holmesburg Prison, stating, “There is no reason to lighten the restrictions against such research, which was the result of decades of abuses,” and calling to mind “the dangers of unchecked power over a vulnerable population, the examples of which ruined untold number of lives.”
He cited these words from Allen Hornblum’s conclusion:
“It couldn’t happen in America” we reassured ourselves about medical practices in Nazi Germany. But intolerable medical practices were practiced on vulnerable populations in America, without the support of the political culture or the despotic leadership that captivated Germany under the Third Reich, without any protest from the AMA, which prides itself on its ability to regulate itself.
History suggests that we are as susceptible to abusing our socially and economically disenfranchised citizens as any other nation. If, as many believe, a democracy is only as strong as the respect accorded its weakest members, we must work to assure that neither these abuses nor the “conspiracy of silence” that makes them possible ever happen again. We must do this not only for the benefit of the powerless, but also for the benefit of society as a whole.” Allen Hornblum, Acres of Skin, Human Experiments at Holmesburg Prison
Responsibility of the OHRP and SACHRP to Americans Claiming Non-Consensual Human Experimentation
To what extent is the Office of Human Research Protections (OHRP) and SACHRP responsible for protecting those claiming to be the current subjects of classified research, under current Intelligence loopholes which waive Informed Consent?
In the hope that OHRP and SACHRP would indeed act to strengthen, not weaken protections for those being used non-consensually today in classified research projects, a small group of people claiming non-consensual subjection to clandestine experimentation came forward to present public comment.
It must be noted here that several in this group, as well as others, testified earlier at the SACHRP Dec 3-4 Meetings in 2015 and 2011, and also at the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues meetings in March and May 2011, video coverage for all of which may be found online (some links in Resources at end). It is important to note that public testimony of non-consensual experimentation has been continually coming forward for many years, yet no action by these Governmental institutions to investigate and terminate these deadly experiments has been forthcoming.
Cait Ryan: “Do Not Turn From Your Responsibility – Deny the Intelligence Agencies Waivers of Informed Consent”
Cait Ryan, Director, US-CACH, Public Comment/SACHRP, May 18, 2016
Cait Ryan, Director of US-CACH, United States Coalition Against Covert Harassment, opened her public comment emphasizing that the Common Rule must not supersede the Constitution nor replace due process, which includes notice of government action, and opportunity for citizens to make a case.
“The NRPM states that the rationale for excluding Defense or National Security-related activities is that their mandated missions are:
- Field studies, not research and are not designated to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge, and
- Solely conducted to fulfill a department or an agency’s legal mandate.
Under the definition of human subject:
#2. Interventions includes both physical procedures by which data are gathered, and manipulations of the subject or the subject’s environment are performed for research purposes.
My question to you is: How do you define physical procedure and how do you define manipulations? Do they include inflicting physical pain?
#3 Interaction includes communication or interpersonal contact between investigator and subject.
My question is, what do you mean by communication – is it verbal, is it data, wireless contact? Does the investigator, not knowing the subject’s name mean that the individual is NOT a human subject? Or if the individual is accessed remotely, would this too mean the individual is NOT a human subject?
My issue with these definitions and also with how you would define separately “field study”, “field research”, and “human research”. I cite for clarification a current General Dynamics grant* that allows for “field research” with directed energy and high powered pulse weapons. Please note these are remotely activated weapons upon the human body to develop and understand the bio effects associated with non-lethal weapons.
These include directed energy, riot control agents, broadband light, acoustic sounds, and blunt impact. Under the current definition of human subject, the fact that these are applied remotely questionably skirts the definition and no oversight is applied, potentially subjecting human subjects to what can be lethal violent force – which I remind you is unseen.
So, I request that you remedy the human subject definition to account for current technology. I ask that you include “field study”.
In today’s rapidly increasing technology it IS generalizable knowledge and it is foolish to think that there is no crossover into the public sector when military weapons are now being shifted from military to local law enforcement and Homeland Security.” Cait Ryan, Public Comment/SACHRP, May 18, 2016
She also noted that her organization had learned that 62-67 victims of unethical ongoing experimentation had submitted comment, and reminded the OHRP of their responsibility to stand up to the Intelligence Agencies who sought to hide their research from Common Rule scrutiny via exclusions;
“Their comments have given me a greater understanding that it is critical that you act to prioritize protections over research.
I plead with you to do the right thing: follow the lead of the Department of Energy’s legal counsel which recently stated “The Clinton Memo still has legal effect”. Tighten the rules, guarantee Informed Consent. And please, do not turn from your responsibility – deny the Intelligence Agencies waivers of Informed Consent, place field studies under the same oversight as research. Demand transparency.” Cait Ryan, Public Comment/SACHRP, May 18, 2016
Peter Rosenholm: “Don’t you think you should be listening when people die, people commit suicide who were in an experiment?
Peter Rosenholm, Public Comment/SACHRP, May 18, 2016
Peter Rosenholm said he wished to talk about “some of the real crimes that were going on,” and called attention to Seroquel clinical trials in which he said he was an unwitting participant (as clarified later: in Rhode Island, from 2001-2006, something he says he learned about only from his medical records). He mentioned Carl Elliot, asking if the Committee had heard of him–to which he says most around the table nodded. Carl Elliott, MD, Ph.D is a bioethicist who has spoken out against the abuses in psychiatric research in 2003 AstroZeneca/Seroquel clinical trials at the University of Minnesota where a young man then being treated for psychosis, Dan Markingson, committed suicide while signed on to hazardous Seroquel studies, when Elliott and others say he should have been considered mentally incapacitated at the time, and unable to give Informed Consent for participation in the Seroquel trials.
“I hate to say it but I was in the Seroquel experiment and it was never told, it destroyed my health and my life…Carl Elliott is exposing what’s going on in experimentation, and it is ugly. It’s because companies are making billions of dollars…they are setting up an experiment, almost every IRB is being approved–they are making billions, people’s lives are being destroyed.
So in other words people are dying, people are committing suicide, this should be listed. You talked earlier about it. Sometimes people die, should we list it? I think you should. I think there needs to be more transparency.
I spoke to the Bioethics Director, Amy Gutmann, I said if you believe you’re in an experiment which I found out I was later, up to 1400 milligrams of Seroquel, five or six years because I made complaints against a local government agency, they are using experimentation as a hit squad.
So there are those of us dying over it, committing suicide, we get thrown into experimentation.
I notice you don’t want to get into the ugly side, but Carl Elliott exposed it, you know it’s there.
I’d like to ask you quickly: what can you do to stop this? How can you be more transparent? Don’t you think you should be listening when people die, people commit suicide who were in an experiment? Shouldn’t we be able to look up that we are in an experiment? Can anyone give an answer to any of that?” Peter Rosenholm, Public Comment, SACHRP, May 18, 2016
Joan Dawson: “We ask that people in paid positions not safeguard your careers while letting our lives be sacrificed.”
Joan Dawson, Public Comment/SACHRP, May 18, 2016
Joan Dawson opened her comment with an anecdote about her mother a few weeks before she died:
“In December of 2012 my mother had suffered a heart attack and we were in the rehabilitation facility, and it was me, my mother and my sister, and my mother found this very large paper clip on the floor and she reached down, picked it up and went to me and said, do you want this? We said, okay, I put it in my pocket.”
She went on to mention that paper clips kept showing up around her later, after her mother passed, in the oddest places, becoming her mother’s “calling card.”
The unstated reference to Project Paperclip, the post-World War II US Government initiative that fudged Nazi-background data to bring more than 1600 Nazi scientists to work with the US military and intelligence agencies–rescuing them, ironically enough, from the Nuremberg tribunals, and installing them later in such grisly CIA experiments on humans as MK ULTRA and MK DELTA–possibly did not go unnoticed by anyone in the room.
Relevant in this context are words from President Eisenhower’s farewell address, where he admitted a scientist who gave him pause for concern was the celebrated Paperclipper Werner von Braun, and pointed to the dangers of public policy in science being hijacked by an elite:
“In holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.” Cited in James Norwood’s New York Times review of Annie Jacobsen’s book, Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists to America.
Joan Dawson’s powerful and moving testimony included personal experience, a direct address to the SACHRP Committee, and a reading of the names of many of those who have died as a result of the non-consensual experimentation performed on them today:
“I worked for a Federal contractor, I was a whistleblower. I experienced mobbing which is when your co-workers turn against you, psychological abuse, I left. I thought it was over, and it came back to haunt me again, and I left my job in 2013 and recreated my life with six income streams, six months later it fell apart, I experienced mobbing again. One job, a man told me this is what you get when you mess with the police. The next week, everywhere I looked there was a police officer.
“My life has become a nightmare. Part of me wanted to say walking up here, Dead Woman Walking. You probably won’t believe what my life is like. I do believe I’m in COINTELPRO. There was recently a sign-on letter by 60 organizations including one where I served for five years as Secretary and Board Member…We believe it’s a combination of COINTELPRO and testing with military weapons…directed energy weapons, nano-technology, different types of tracking with chips..these are weapons that are like Next Gen weapons which are being researched .. and you can find the research studies when you Google it. So I attest that I am definitely in COINTELPRO and could be used for experimentation.”
Joan Dawson: “We ask that human beings are not sacrificed …for the benefit of the common good, that’s what the Nazis did.”
“We ask that people we talk to in these paid positions not safeguard your careers while letting our lives be sacrificed. We ask that human beings are not sacrificed for this country for the benefit of the common good, that’s what the Nazis did. And they had to sell their messages to professionals and to the public. And that’s being done today. We also know about the experiment with the obedience to authority, where over 61% administered pain to another human being if instructed by authorities. They rationalized their behavior by appealing to the greater good and for the advancement of science.We have enough in our history to teach us what’s right today. And this is not right, what is happening to us.
“We ask that consent be given in all physical, mental behavior studies and not have waivers for heads of Federal agencies. We ask that this be done whether the person, human being, is in a lab or in a remote situation or they are at home or on the street. Because that can be done with technology.
“We ask that consent be given in unclassified and classified research. We ask for help, what do we need, we have the numbers. We know we have the numbers of experimentees, we have the evidence, we have whistleblowers who acknowledge and confirm our allegations. What do we need more?
“We ask that there are term limits on this. We understand National Security. We’re all citizens. We ask there be term limits on this, or a way to opt out. Currently there’s only one way to opt out, and it’s death.
Joan Dawson/Reading the names of the dead from current-day non-consensual experimentation in the United States of America/SACHRP, May 18, 2016
“And these are the people I’m familiar with, not whom I know, but names that I know who have died from being in this.
Kelly Cassler in 2015.
Gail Whittaker, Harlan Girard, in 2015.
Darren Dowd from electronic harassment.
Sean Stin in 2012.
Elvira Anderson, 2012, suicide.
Ray Costkey, in April of 2013.
Sarah Metheny in September of 2014.
Alexandra Foster, 2015, 33 years old, suicide.
John Lang in January of 2016. Predicted he would be killed by the Fresno cops, he died of stab wounds, house set on fire. He was a Targeted Individual as many of us call ourselves.
Ron Gilman, 2016, Voice to Skull, which used to be called Voice of God in the Persian Gulf war. He had two daughters.
Jessica Davis Thompson in February of 2016. Died of suicide. She lived in Washington State, she called herself a Targeted Individual.
Carol S. Peoples, died at the age of 43.
Jacqueline Feely Ross, died in November of 2015.
Benjamin Alan Murphy in the United Kingdom, 57 years old.
Myron May, FSU shooter, Targeted Individual, young man who was an attorney.
Aaron Alexis, Navy Yard shooter, was a Targeted Individual. He was shot, was receiving electronic harassment.
Miriam Carey, who made the illegal u-turn in the White House heard voices that sounded like Obama, that’s Voice to Skull, used to be called Voice of God, they can morph (voices), it’s a technology available.
Debra Gillmaker is the last name.
These are people that we know were targeted and that died. The only opt-out is death. And that’s why I said Dead Woman Walking.
Because suicide … I mean, we need to opt out. You have no idea what this does to our lives.” Joan Dawson, Public Comment, SACHRP, May 18, 2016
Cassandra Lewis: “We know technologies are being developed the public doesn’t know about–somebody needs to look into what’s happening”
Cassandra Lewis, Public Comment/SACHRP, May 19, 2016
Cassandra Lewis, who noted that she testified in New York at the President’s Bioethical Commission meeting in 2011, stated that she started experiencing peculiar electromagnetic signals on her body after a misunderstanding with an attorney during a stint at a law firm in 2005 in Washington DC, Hogan Lovells, which led her to understand she had become “some kind of research subject”. A part of her comment follows:
“Because these things are happening to me, I think that agencies should know about this and look into what I’m saying, there are others here who will probably report the same thing.
“I get involuntary movements of my fingers, my thumbs, my legs. I get vibrations in different parts of my body. I get an intense heating of my skin. I get a freezing, icy coldness, that can be concentrated to different parts of my body…. I can get forced sleep. I can be jolted awake. I have facial muscle manipulations. I have forced sounds – I experience these guttural sounds that would happen in my throat, yet I would hear them in my head, it was really weird.
Cassandra Lewis: “Research being done very covertly with technologies the public doesn’t know about”/SACHRP, May 19
“Someone forwarded to me some literature about a technology developed called Medusa. That is something developed by the Navy…I get a feeling sometimes when I lay down, it feels like some type of energy that’s going through me and it makes me feel weightless. Something happens to me where I will suddenly jerk, and it feels like electricity is going from the top of my head, it goes all through my body.
“So these are the dominant things that have been happening to me. And so I think that when we come to you and we have been termed “Targeted Individuals,” why we are targeted, we really don’t know. However, we know that technologies are being developed that the general public does not know about, and we believe they are being tested secretly on innocent United States citizens. I’m one. And somebody needs to look into what’s happening.” Cassandra Lewis, Public Comment, SACHRP, May 19, 2016
Nola Alexander: “This Committee is the oversight for all Military, Federal, and Corporate research projects.”
Nola Alexander, Public Comment/SACHRP, May 19, 2016
Nola Alexander, from Washington, DC, reminded the SACHRP Committee of the 1977 Hearings on (MKULTRA) Behavior Modification programs on non-consensual subjects, and informed them these had started up again, while the Common Rule had failed to protect “no consent” subjects. Mentioning a DARPA project on the Mind presented at a 2014 conference, she quoted a former Hill and White House official who informed researchers their main job was not doing good science but selling their research idea to Congress and the White House, however bad or good it was:
“In the symposium “America’s Next Frontier: Conquering The Mind” held on September 24, 2014, the focus was on enhancing human intelligence. A panelist at this seminar spoke of a research project conducted by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency called “Accelerated Learning.”
“While projects like Accelerated Learning may be desired by many in order to compete in today’s education, economic, and social environments, one comment at this seminar was made by a public policy official, who “having worked on the Hill and at the White House doling out money”…alluded that it does not matter if your science is good or bad, old or new, or if falls through the cracks or is blossoming, you need to be charismatic and convince these entities that this is something we have to do.
“I’m here today, to call attention to Behavior Modification Through Thought Process projects that are bad, old (they have been going on for quite sometime), and when we complain, our complaints have fallen through the cracks or ignored by this Committee which is the oversight for all Military, Federal, and Corporate research projects.
“It is estimated that over 500,000 Americans including myself are no-consent human research subjects to unwarranted surveillance, thought identification, biometric physiological signatures used in neurosynaptic chips to cause “Synthetic Telepathy”, “Acoustic Infrasound and Ultrasound” which cause heating of human tissue and sickness, acoustic and optical Psycho Correction” – these terms have been listed in the U.S. Air Force Academy’s Non-lethal Terms and Reference.
“And I would like to say personally as a Christian and believer in Jesus Christ as my Savior that this is Antichrist, and you may laugh and, you know, call it crazy, but it is against my religious beliefs to be a part of or participate in such a research as this.
“So standing here before you, I would like to know what can we do, since we have given our issue to you of being non-consent human research subjects, to get you to take up our complaint and investigate it.” Nola Alexander, Public Comment, SACHRP, May 19, 2016
Karla Smith: “You have Enough Information to say No Waivers Of Informed Consent, PERIOD!”
Karla Smith, part of whose comment is relayed in earlier sections on the Victim Stakeholder Summary and the Clinton Memo, spoke emotionally and powerfully, for both herself, she said, and Norman Rabin, who was not present, and stressed the need for the SACHRP Committee to act to stop all waivers for Informed Consent, given her own experience of non-consensual surgery and implantation, and the need for all people to be secure and free from bodily intrusion and privacy rights violation.
Karla Smith, Public Comment/SACHRP, May 19, 2016/Speaking about human rights violations
“Please note that our stakeholders continue to allege an on-going Human Research/ Experimentation Program, which subjects citizens and others to severe Human and Constitutional Rights violations which affects their daily liberty; the right to be secure in their own person; and freedom from repeated Cruel and Inhumane Treatment. It is imperative that each person’s autonomy, self-determination, human dignity and constitutional rights prevail over scientific advancement and social and military benefit.
“We have a history of non-consensual human experimentation that is well documented. I didn’t know about it until I became a victim. Yet victims’ comments to the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues and other agencies continue to be ignored.
“All Federal regulations should reflect publicly acknowledged Constitutional and human rights. Additionally, the Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects should truly be Proactively Protective of Human Subjects.
“Victims have been experiencing this for over 50 years, and on a personal note, I have been tested–over 20 implants were found including neural dust. Neural dust was originally developed by UC Berkeley, and includes a subdural transceiver that’s under the skull. It also includes an external transceiver and CMOS chips overlaid over the cortex.
(Note: Karla Smith offers this correction to her spoken comment: EMF emissions (consistent with implants) were found at 20 sites on my body. I said over 20 because I also found wires in my ears, what appear to be implants in my ears and sinus/nostrils with a cheap endoscope.)
Karla Smith, Public Comment, May 19, 2016/Speaking about scars from non-consensual surgery
“You can see that I have surgery scars. It was non-consensual–and I implore you to just make it illegal, even if you don’t believe it. Even if you ignore the history. Even if you ignore our testimony. You have enough information to say No Waivers Of Informed Consent, period!” Karla Smith, Public Comment, SACHRP, May 18, 2016
SACHRP’s Response to Powerful Public Testimony of Current-Day Non-Consensual Experimentation by DoD/DOJ/Intelligence Agencies and Medical Professionals
Public comment on the first day (from Cait Ryan, Peter Rosenholm, Joan Dawson) was briefly acknowledged and thanked by SACHRP Chair, Dr. Jeffrey Botkin, who is Professor of Medical Ethics and Pediatrics at the University of Utah.
On the second and concluding day, after comment from Cassandra Lewis, Nola Alexander, and Karla Smith, Dr. Botkin expressly stated that SACHRP could not follow up on the “concerns” expressed regarding ongoing non-consensual research and experimentation in the nation:
“The Committee very much appreciates the ongoing testimony of the public on this set of issues. SACHRP traditionally has not been a Committee that is geared to respond to allegations in the community and sort of take up specific cases, so our Committee isn’t well suited to follow up on the concerns that you express. So at a minimum, we are happy to serve as a platform to bring these concerns forward to the research community generally and certainly to OHRP and others.”
While public platforms are certainly needed for the public airing of information on covertly-conducted non-consensual experimentation, there are a few points to be made here.
ONE, SACHRP is the appointed committee of medical professionals working on making changes to the Common Rule, a Federal standard of protection for human subjects in medical or other experiments, both unclassified and classified (the latter as per Executive Order 12333).
Although many analysts scrutinizing Intelligence and Military use of human subjects, historically, have noted that these “covered entities” have traditionally made use of loopholes in the Common Rule to secretly experiment on citizens (MKULTRA, Project Shad, Tuskegee, ’40s radiation experiments), the Common Rule is still the primary Rule they are required to keep to, on paper.
There are no other Federal regulations governing their use of human subjects. There are no other Federal bodies apart from OHRP and SACHRP publicly working to finalize changes to this Common Federal Regulation, even if other “Federal players” are involved. SACHRP is formulated in fact as an Advisory Committee to the Secretary of Health.
That in itself should necessarily involve and include SACHRP, OHRP, and HHS–in responsibility and accountability, for any cases of non-consensual experimentation being reported by the public—which would point to exploitation by secretive agencies and entities, possibly using loopholes in regulation.
To say, “We will help make and oversee the Rule (working with other Federal agencies) to protect human subjects, but if anyone comes along and says they are being used as human subjects in experiments they didn’t sign up for (by other Federal agencies), we’ll respond with silence,” cannot be acceptable.
TWO, openly rendering the Common Rule impotent via exclusions, as per the current NPRM that SACHRP is working on, would imply active steps by SACHRP to approve, permit, and sanction these exclusions—language for which they stated was provided by a variety of “Federal players”.
Allegations of non-consensual neuro-experimentation/Directed-Energy Weapon (DEW) field testing therefore in the community, denoting extant and ongoing secret experimentation (utilizing extant Common Rule loopholes) by these very same entities that are seeking to keep current secret neuro-experimentation/DEW testing and operation secret, and any future human experimentation secret—while completely stripping every American citizen (and indeed, others worldwide, through joint Intelligence Agency agreements worldwide) of the basic, Nuremberg-protection of Informed Consent in all present and future-case scenarios–should most certainly be an issue of concern to this Committee which is currently seeking or agreeing to set up the very body of regulations that will ultimately further protect Intelligence/National Security/DOD agencies and DOJ from public scrutiny.
In other words, the American public as a whole is served ill by an evading of responsibility at the level of SACHRP and OHRP, and such a “passing of the buck,” leaving no-one responsible, leaves the field wide open for abuse of human subjects, marking perhaps exactly what the Intel/military agencies and the DOJ want: high protection of Intelligence agencies/Military/Justice and private interests who seek carte blanche to continue engaging in extremely damaging, pain-inducing, life-destroying classified research and deadly new weapons testing and operation on Americans without their consent.
It is not acceptable therefore—and the public should point this out—that the actual arbiters and makers of change, code, regulation, and policy, i.e., inclusive of Congress, aided by SACHRP and OHRP (or whatever other Commission works on the NPRM for the Common Rule or any new Human Subject Protection Code as hinted at by the new June 29-released National Academies report), or the public face thereof—if that is alone what they are–can eschew responsibility in the issue of addressing allegations of non-consensual experimentation in the community.
As public commenters pointed out, such allegations point inevitably to undisclosed or classified activities and “covered entities”.
It should stand to reason that it is precisely the regulatory body whether HHS/SACHRP/OHRP which seeks to allow classified activities–under the guise of “activities,” not research–the use of unconsenting humans covertly as subjects for any kind of experimentation or investigation, that is indeed responsible and should indeed be held accountable when humans step forward to describe covert experiments being performed non-consensually on their bodies.
Particularly since they are the ones seeking or agreeing to exonerate the “covered entities” of any responsibility themselves.
Questions of Accountability: These are no doubt issues other analysts can contribute more powerfully to. The question however that is being raised here must not be lost sight of: When people in civil society are preyed upon, experimented upon, secretly, by “covered entities,” who do they complain to, in our society? Who is the public body that will take and investigate allegations? (As commenters note, the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, supposedly set up to find out if research abuses were occurring today, chose to step away from responsibility–a very troubling issue in itself, which must be examined separately. If SACHRP steps away too, who is left?) What is the procedure for redress? Where is the Public Health attention to this issue? Particularly today, when directed-energy weapons are being field-tested—in Defense contracts—and are also operated “legally” by the Department of Justice as “non-lethal” surveillance technologies, and when multiple, wireless, and remote radiation and neuro-technologies are being developed?
What must also be doubly, triply, and continually underlined is: The allegations currently being brought forward are in fact allegations of torture, no less horrifying than the CIA’s torture of “Enhanced Interrogation” at Guantanamo. Shouldn’t our Public Health guardians be doubly, triply, and continually concerned then, about such allegations? Shouldn’t a mechanism exist in our society, to prevent and to stop such an overwhelming violation of basic human rights?
Intensive Concern about Informed Consent in Written Comments from Stated Victims of Ongoing Covert Non-Consensual Experimentation
A small cross-section from notes is presented here, of excerpted public comments from people describing themselves as victims or as related to victims of non-consensual experimentation, including possible victims, pointing to high concern among this group regarding the proposed exclusions for Intelligence Surveillance and Criminal Justice, and adding heft to the comments presented by activists at the meeting. The document linked here, Victim Stakeholder Summary Featuring Victim or TI Comments, offers a more comprehensive view, with notes from all victim comments, and comment numbers, for ease of look-up on Regulations.gov. For complete comments, please look online there, at Regulations.gov.
Also of note: These comments were not alluded to in the Executive Summary presented at the SACHRP meeting, but very clearly, in this day of increasing wireless/remote-control technologies, the fact that a cross-section of citizens would step forward to describe covert remote experimentation with measurable pulses of radiation on their persons should be infinite cause for alarm in any educated civil society.
As such, the unique recommendations these individuals make to change the language of the regulation—coming as it does from outside the “research community” of scientists and strategists writing this language, and representing the larger public most likely to be affected by this language—should be considered critically important.
Phyllis Cherubini (spouse of victim):
“Under Section 2.1 (Explicit Exclusion of Six Categories of Research Deemed Not Research), three items are troubling. These items relate to Criminal Justice Activities, Public Health Surveillance, and Intelligence Surveillance.
First of all, wording of Section 2.1 seems contradictory: research that is not deemed research. In reality, just because the knowledge gained from research from an entity like DARPA is classified, it is still research.
Second, the criminal justice system, the intelligence community (including the Department of Defense), and the public health community have a verifiable history of nonconsensual research:
To suggest that these groups are not currently involved in research that could endanger the lives of unsuspecting human subjects begs the question.
We know, for example, that the CIA is currently involved in research on humans in the United States from a November 15, 2011, letter sent by V. Sue Bromley, Associate Deputy Director of the CIA, to Amy Gutman, Chair of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues (reported in their Moral Science Report). (And covered above.)
Like other exempt organizations under the surveillance umbrella, this group should be held accountable. Disregard for human subject input concerning participation in a research project is criminal, not beneficent or just.” Phyllis Cherubini, Public Comment, NPRM
Linda Kmiotek:
“The sixth category of excluded activities that will not be considered research involves surveys, interviews, surveillance activities and related analysis…” It seems as though the Bioethics Team is being asked to not call it research, thereby exempting persons from the Rule of Law as it exists today. I would like to put my two cents worth in and disagree and say that as I have no attorney, don’t have much time to read through all of the language, that justice and ethics are simple, and that those who have the power to inject more language into laws are only trying to muddy things.
May I please end this plea by saying that the attitude of blind pursuit: the worship of curiosity and building new weapons damn the consequences must end. All of Earth’s inhabitants may suffer as a result of mankind’s inventions.” Linda Kmiotek, Public Comment, NPRM
Barbara Guillette:
“We need to broaden the definition of research to mean an investigation, including research development, testing and evaluation. We need to broaden the definition of research subject to regulation to include all research. State and local entities should comply with the Common Rule particularly when public benefit or service programs involve research on human beings.
All federal and non-federal entities should be mandated to comply explicitly with the Common Rule.
I recommend dropping the term “both physical” from the definition of Intervention to reflect remote intervention.
The testing, use and abuse and manipulation of directed energy weapons against the people is callously destroying productive lives.
Why would they want to lower standards on using humans as research subjects? Need loopholes for Brain Initiative, Precision Medicine Initiative? – these programs will be using human subjects for testing. Objects – they are using human subjects for testing now.” Barbara Guillette, Public Comment, NPRM
Anonymous Anonymous:
In summary, your proposal ~ if it would become a final rule would cause the HHS to define persons as non-human, or to not recognize individuals as human persons with rights, when they are being subjected to “Intelligence Surveillance Activities” as defined by the proposed rule.
Shut down this proposal immediately. There should be no attempt to exclude people from having the protections extended by the Constitution or those which are commonly understood human rights. Anonymous Anonymous, Public Comment, NPRM
Steven White:
Steven White, Public Comment, NPRM: “a picture of me in stilwater, OK 1969 summer camp”
Steven White, who notes that he has been a victim for over 45 years, attached the photograph here, and states that he is the famous MK ULTRA boy (from this widely-known photograph, with sign “Strain All Urine”, notated “Unidentified white female between the ages of 8 and 10 yrs old.”). Directing readers to Marshall Thomas’ book, Monarch: The New Phoenix Program, he details a horrific experience of abuse along with other children, describing how people running the Phoenix program in Oklahoma went on to occupy positions of authority in Texas. He also says he was instrumental–as a child non-consensually exploited in experimentation–in the development of the M.I.N.D (Magnetic Integrated Neuron Duplicator) computer, which he says was “in use at prisons across the country (and is being used) still today”, and which was also featured in a lawsuit by San Quentin prisoner John Ginter (about his electromagnetic mind targeting in 1967), and gave Cheryl Welsh the name Mindjustice.org for her website:
“The FOIA picture is wrongly listed as taken in 1961 when it was taken summer of 1969 in Stillwater, Oklahoma, in the children’s away-from-parents summer camp that was 1 + weeks long AGAIN. We were kidnapped, gassed, all of us were 5 years of age or under and we were raped every day in the semi truck trailers this picture was taken in….That is me and I am a BOY like I told the man taking the picture.
…(W)e are denied the right to live, freedom, justice and the American way, as well as a family.
…I also built the M.I.N.D. computer 1963-1968 in Tulsa Okla at a hospital lab I was left at for months at a time as a newborn to 5 year old…You must stop all testing on all humans including those in jail.” Steven White, Public Comment, NPRM
Diane Shomaker:
“Over fifty years after Project MKULTRA officially ended and 40 years after the Church Committee reported that the CIA and DOD conducted experiments on unwitting human beings, many US citizens and others are continuing to report they are victims of classified research including weapons testing. Many testified before the Bioethics Commission in 2011.
“…I’ve been a victim of electronic weapons for over 2 years. I have heard hundreds of other victims stories that are very similar to mine. I’m close to becoming crippled from being repeatedly attacked with these weapons. Cancer may be on it’s way or maybe I have it now from the constant radiation. I have spent over $8,000 on doctors & shielding. I have proof from doctors & licensed private detectives of these frequencies from weapons used on me.
Please help us end this slow, silent mass murder & get the weapons out of the hands of criminals.” Diane Shomaker, Public Comment, NPRM
Bella D:
“The United States is a state party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and HAS ASSURED THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY THAT NON-CONSENSUAL RESEARCH IS BARRED BY THE U.S. CONSTITUTION AS WELL AS BY THE INTERNATIONAL COVENANT ON CIVIL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS. This is an opportunity to increase the protections for human subjects and enforce explicit existing laws governing human research under the ICCPR and the US Constitution. That is, absolute informed consent for all human experimentation and research, including and especially that which is deemed classified.” Bella D, Public Comment, NPRM
Eduardo Colon questions why the rule-making proposes excluding Defense Surveillance activities:
“I see this FR as an irony, as the Defense Department is seeking yet more control in extending what they can and cannot do in their involvement of human experimentation. This FR simply gives them greater legal means to justify non-consensual human experimentation, and considering the severe circumstances of thousands like myself, this current experiment includes torture.
I ask to look into the real purpose of this FR revision, to look at past human experimentation programs conducted by the DOD/CIA, and question why would this FR exclude human research protections based on defense surveillance activities…”
Exclusion (is being) used as a legal means to justify non-consensual human experimentation.” Eduardo Colon, Public Comment, NPRM
Jaami Ali:
“Priorities should be made to establish parity in education, housing, food, environment, job creation for all Americans so that people will not have barriers to self actualization. As major disparities do exist all over this country, misplaced anger and NAZI agendas are flourishing like wild flowers; as a result deals are being made with the US intelligence and military to apply covert tools of human experimentation on self-actualized women of color, such as myself.” Jaami Ali, Public Comment, NPRM
Christopher Knall:
“In short, the use of mood, thought, and behavior altering devices on nonconsenting human beings is slavery, a violation of the most basic human right and the 14th Amendment. There are multiple examples where odd behavior of people who made the news may have been subjected to this or other methods more closely related to the old MKULTRA, MKOFTEN, DORMOUSE and other drug-related programs conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency during the Cold War.”
“Not only has the US Government failed to rein in the worst of human experimentation, but the methods and means that were once in the experimental phase have been used actively to curb rights in violation of several statutes including most notably Conspiracy Against Rights where, for example, directed energy weapons have been used for political purposes.
“See Donald Friedman’s FOIA. Mood, thought and behavior altering devices on non-consenting humans beings is a violation of 14th amendment. In other words, the use of these means and methods are themselves a National Security threat.
“Stating that the purposes are not for experimentation does not make the actions of agencies and private contractors any less experimental. We need to open the books on these practices AGAIN.” Christopher Knall, Public Comment, NPRM
Debra Poulsen stated that she spoke at the 2011 Bioethics Commission meeting in Washington, DC, yet was ignored:
But I don’t know what saddens me most: That there are still people doing unethical research in our Country, or that there are still U.S. citizens who will participate in this disgusting program against their fellow man.
Please do something at this point for all persons in unethical, unwilling experimentation programs. We are out there. We are speaking out. We are now asking again – please hear us. Debra Poulsen, Public Comment, NPRM
Margaret Zawodniak, in a 10-page comment with links and citations which can be found here, made reference to the recently-exposed collusion of the APA with CIA/DOD, and discussed, along with others (in a common comment), the findings of the Church Committee, regarding the historic collusion of the APA and many universities in MK ULTRA projects:
“Recently, the American Psychological Association (APA) was found to have colluded with the CIA and the DOD to weaken the association’s ethical guidelines and allow psychologists to participate in the government’s “enhanced” interrogation programs post-911. The APA also had Top Secret clearance during Project MKULTRA, which was brought to public attention in 1975 by the Church Committee.
“Past abuses of unethical and non-consensual experimentation by U.S. military and intelligence agencies include behavior control Projects CHATTER, BLUEBIRD, ARTICHOKE, MKULTRA, MKSEARCH, MKNAOMI and others. They were often interwoven with radiation experiments and research on chemical and biological weapons. U.S. defense and intelligence agencies funded the research with a broad network of academic institutions such as Stanford, Cornell, Princeton, and John Hopkins; pharmaceutical companies such as Eli Lily; medical schools and hospitals; the American Psychological Association; the National Institutes of Health, the Veterans Administration Center, the U.S. Public Health Service and others.”
Reporting Church Committee findings, as well as the “Clinton Memo,” she recommended, for the Intelligence Surveillance exclusion:
“…(Since) The ANPRM did not propose or discuss this exclusion …I recommend extending the comment period for this exclusion and implementing an Interim Final Rule which requires informed consent with no waiver or exceptions possible for all current and future classified human research, and Rulemaking.”
Regarding the Criminal Justice exclusion, she wrote:
“The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) is the research, development, and evaluation agency of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). In 2011, the November Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program (JNLWP) Newsletter included a statement from a senior Scientist at the Directed Energy Research Programs National Institute of Justice, that for more than 10 years, the NIJ and the JNLWP have shared research and expertise in developing and evaluating new less-lethal technology.
The worldwide nonlethal weapons market is expected to double by 2020 from 2013, according to a 2014 report by Dan Inbar, chairman and chief technology officer of Homeland Security Research Corp. He said the U.S. market is expected to follow that trend, increasing from $500 million in 2013 to about $930 million in 2020.
Because the DOJ is involved in the Non-Lethal Weapons Program; and because they have engaged in non-lethal weapons research; and because the non-lethal weapons market is expected to double from 2013 to 2020; and because many are reporting they are victims of classified research including weapons testing, criminal justice activities should be subjected to oversight, particularly classified research.”
The Common Rule should be written in such a manner that explicit exclusions are not necessary and should be avoided, particularly surveillance and criminal justice activities.” Margaret Zawodniak, Public Comment, NPRM
She also noted, regarding Precision Medicine:
“DNA and blood can act as antennas because both are based on crystalline forms. If President Obama’s Precision Initiative uses a person’s DNA or blood to guide Directed Energy toward them, they will be using this technology for torture and killing instead of for anyone’s benefit. Secret technology is already being used against Americans. See CitizensAHT.org. People are being tortured and killed with electromagnetic weapons of all kinds. You have the power to protect as well as torture and kill. DO YOUR DUTY TO PROTECT HUMANS!” Margaret Zawodniak, Public Comment, NPRM
In an additional comment, she included a screenshot from Facebook of Dr. Hall’s testimony to the Bioethics Commission in Washington DC March 2011 (included below). (Some of her references and links are reproduced in the Related links section at end.)
Dr. Hall’s Testimony/Presidential Bioethics Commission, March 2011
Linda Costanzo:
“Many Americans are being hit with destructive frequencies that are causing diseases. Please investigate Directed Energy Weapons and what they are able to do to humans and animals. You need to help protect the citizens of this country. Radiation has been closely linked with cancer and we need protection.” Linda Costanzo, Public Comment, NPRM
Wayne DeBlaker, Sr.:
“The FBI are using the laws and rules of classified research to justify their treatment of suspects during investigations. The FBI Behavioral Sciences website states the FBI conducts research on criminals to learn about crime and its motives and environments.” Wayne DeBlaker, Sr., Public Comment, NPRM
Roger German:
“DO NOT lower standards on using humans as research subjects. Obama’s Brain Initiative, Precision Medicine Initiative – will require loopholes in human research rules – will be using human subjects. DNA as a Fractal Antenna – if Precision Initiative uses a person’s DNA or blood to guide Directed Energy toward them, they will be using this technology for torture and killing instead of for anyone’s benefit. I oppose relaxing of the rules; I would like to see rules strengthened for protection to human subjects and protection against crimes against humanity.” Roger German, Public Comment, NPRM
Ricardo Lopez:
“Will they own our bodies, DNA, too?
Re. Rebecca Skloot: Your Cells. Their Research. Your Permission? – DNA: I think, there are very important points that aren’t addressed either by the NY Times or this article. In fact, there is an underlying metaphor in that NY Times article about our cellphones doubling as our surveillance bracelets we even pay for, that is not being well exploited.
As we all know well, anything that the MIC (military industrial complex), politicians and police can mess with, they will ultimately use to abuse people. As part of the so-called patriot act, the U.S. government has access to all our medical records. Now, how exactly do our medical records relate to our individual civil and moral convictions?
Medical professionals such as APA members offer their scientific expertise to CIA / FBI and are engaging in torturing innocent people even though torture is illegal.
One’s individual’s right to bodily integrity is already a human right. Nowadays, we live under 24×7 surveillance, will they also own our bodies, DNA?
At the very least, consent will raise those issues to people’s consciousness.” Ricardo Lopez, Public Comment, NPRM
Karen Archer, who notes that she is the moderator of approximately 4,000-5,000 people reporting enough similar symptoms, and who have enough supporting documentation to be convincing that they are non-consensual human experimentees:
“(The experimentation is) effected with such energies as radar, microwave fields; (evidence/symptoms include) laser-like/other burns, bruises, surgical looking incision sites, blunt force trauma leaving bruises and broken capillaries and tissues, loss of control of different parts of their bodies, and some people have voices in their heads while others have a non-stop tinnitis.
This group has been in existence for ten years now and has grown exponentially since I found it in 2013 when I started experiencing unexplainable burns on my face—the group is an average, sane, non-violent, random sampling of population.
This is senseless torture. Please put safeguards in place to prevent the further spread of this horrific situation and to protect our children and grandchildren who could also someday be affected by these apparently covert or hijacked technologies.” Karen Archer, Public Comment, NPRM
Michael Yazdian who notes he is a Certified Public Accountant, attached a letter from Representative Jim Guest about electronic torture (imaged below), and stated he has an online petition site with over 2,700 signatures:”Ban Electronic Warfare on Civilians”, where he has compiled lists of websites reporting non-consensual experimentation, Directed-Energy Weapons, and electronic torture, and where he writes:
“These unconscionable travesties are the ultimate crimes against humanity and we are all at risk. Please address the outcries of all survivors in ending all forms of electronic genocide and menticide. We are pleading for your help to be unleashed from these atrocious Psychotronic shackles. Please do not allow secrecy to enslave civility.” Michael Yazdian, Ban Electronic Warfare on Civilians
Norman Rabin, who submitted several supporting documents, including text of questions submitted at an earlier Dec 3-4, 2016 meeting (included below), and a compilation of public comments related to Intelligence Surveillance activities submitted to the ANRPM in 2011, mentioned, among other suggestions, the need for more public oversight of classified research:
“Contact office – for all classified human research, there shall exist an agency contact office. Even though informed consent under the Common Rule requires that the Human Subject be provided with contact information (for questions, or to report injury, or to withdraw from the research), human subjects of classified research should be afforded this extra safeguard, in the event that a person is subjected to classified human research without being provided with such information. All classified human research shall be registered at 1 or more offices from which the contact office shall be fully empowered to obtain at least as much contact information as is required by informed consent under the Common Rule.
Permanent records shall be kept for all classified human research. All records would be fully preserved until the human subject or legal survivor thereof is satisfied that justice has been obtained. Thereafter, detailed summary records of the human research shall be maintained for historical review, and governmental review, and for other Public purposes.”
4 Questions-for the SACHRP Meeting of December 3-4, 2015/Norman Rabin
Please excuse my having as many as 4 Specific Questions here, but the NPRM-subpart proposing to Exempt unspecified Intelligence Surveillance Activities seems to have been launched upon the Public with no prior mention or discussion of it whatsoever. Therefore, some specific answers from the Government are called for:
Question 1 of 4)
What was the motivation for the NPRM-subpart, which proposes to Exempt unspecified Intelligence Surveillance activities from the federal policy for Protection for Human Subjects? There were both: no Public Comments requesting such an Exemption in the Preliminary Rulemaking in 2011; and, there was no Public Discussion – enlighten us if I missed something – there was no Public Discussion of an Intelligence Surveillance Activities exemption at any of the SACHRP meetings since the 2011 Preliminary Rulemaking?
Where was there any prior Public Discussion of this? What’s the specific motivation for it being proposed?
Question 2 of 4)
Why is the Proposed Exemption so broad? [When spoken, I added: “It could have been specific and limited, but its not.”] It seems crafted to allow U.S. Intelligence to perform Non-Consensual Human Experimentation related to research into new Surveillance Technologies and/or methods? Human Research is research. And, purposeful U.S. Intelligence Surveillance activities within the U.S. are related to serious law enforcement purposes (including Counter Intelligence activities). By definition, Human Research is conducted for Human Research purposes.
Isn’t it obvious that the proposed exemption looks like U.S. Government approval of Non-Consensual Human Experimentation, for Research which studies or which develop Intelligence Surveillance Technologies and/or methods?
Question 3 of 4)
There’s already a known loophole in the federal Policy, so why is this exemption needed? As surely as President Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar, and as surely as the ACHRE [Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments] had many Legal Experts on their Committee and on their Staff, and as surely as they strongly Recommended that a known Existing Loophole allowing Non-Consensual Classified Human Experimentation be closed – remember the March 1997 Policy Change attempt by President Clinton, entitled: “Strengthened Protections for Human Subjects of Classified Research”. As surely as those facts, there is a known loophole which to this day still allows and encourages Non-Consensual Classified Human Experimentation.
So, my third question is: Why is the proposed Exemption needed if there’s already a Known Loophole? Currently, an Agency or Department head must approve a partial waiver or a total waiver of the Policy for Protection of Human Subjects. And, for Classified Human Research in particular, the Notice of Waiver is not required to be disclosed to the Public, such as in the Federal Register, because that would be an unauthorized disclosure of classified information.
So why is the proposed Exemption needed? The existing Loophole already allows them to waive the Policy, if they are able to obtain a waiver from the Department or Agency head.
Why does the NPRM-subpart want to take away the accountability and responsibility of the Agency or Department head, and of the authors of the Application for Waiver, and replace it with an Exemption, and license [encouragement], to disregard the Policy for Protection of Human Subjects, and the Ethics related to it?
Question 4 of 4)
Why did the Rulemaking authors ignore the 15 – 20 Public Comments to the ANPRM, Preliminary Rulemaking, in 2011, which exhibited 50’s [“fifties], or a few hundred, named alleged victims of Ongoing Non-Consensual Surveillance Technology related Human Experimentation?
And, Why did the Rulemaking authors ignore President Clinton’s prior Policy Change attempt, which sought to properly regulate all Classified Human Research, which includes ‘Intelligence Surveillance Related Classified Research’? Norman Rabin, Public Comment, NPRM
Julie Ponder who notes that she is a parolee, states that she is a 15-year victim abused with electronic surveillance by the Department of Corrections and State Intelligence in both Colorado and California:
“I am opposed to passing proposed Common Rule; (it would) make human torture legal.
I am against non-consensual experimentation – informed consent should be required.
I am against human surveillance with psychotronic weapons for experimental purposes; (it inflicts) physical torture, mind control, mind reading, v2k, burn, rape etc – remotely.
It is my understanding that the invention and original uses of these electronic surveillance technologies were for military purposes and national security against terrorism. Now it is being abused in the USA on mental health patients, prisoners being incarcerated, whistle blowers, high profile criminal cases, and your average citizen.
It is being used by the Department of Corrections, State Intelligence, the military, NSA, CIA, and more. It is out of control.
These agencies are abusing each other with (these) technologies, abusing USA citizens, and people in other countries. The legislature should be making laws outlawing the use of surveillance technologies and human experimentation, not making conditions for its use. This is my comment.” Julie Ponder, Public Comment, NPRM
Tyrone Dew who attached Dr. Duncan’s The Executive Summary: Neuropsychological and Electronic No-Touch Torture Report – Numerated Torture Methods for Interrogation and Behavior Modification – A comparison between physical and no-touch torture tactics:
“Mass shooters Aaron Alexis and Myron May are victims of Directed Energy attacks. Credible sources are exposing Direct Energy Non-consensual experimentation.” Tyrone Dew, Public Comment, NPRM
Melanie Garton included an excerpt sourced from https://www.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v1_rul_rule156 and stated that the (non-consensual human experimentation she has experienced) were war crimes, violations of humanitarian law. She experiences spying, gang stalking –it leaves her incapacitated.
“(This is) inhumane and psychological murder and torture of innocent people.” Melanie Garton, Public Comment, NPRM
Todd Giffen who identified himself as a 8-year victim, included several attachments and links (some included in Resources at end), inclusive of letter text from Dr. Duncan and letter text from Dr. Duncan to Dr. Farber, as well as letters of support, evaluations, and Dr. Duncan’s No-Touch Torture report:
“Government, corporations, private, public entities, law enforcement, hospitals and college universities, military and foreign countries should be barred from touching humans or animals for any purpose.
I myself have had satellite/over horizon radar interferometry/electronic warfare used to irradiate and blast my body to a pulp/beam audio and images into my brain now for 8 years and there are thousands of complainants.
This is a violation of Kyllo v United States and the 4th amendment. In Eugene, Oregon, the Navy was even publicly exposed as irradiating citizens.” Todd Giffen, Public Comment, NPRM
(Please note, this is only a representative sampling. There are many other necessary, thought-provoking, and incisive comments from people claiming subjection to non-consensual experimentation that the public should read: please visit the links above for the Summary of Victim Comments.)
Informed Consent in Classified Research: Special Mention of the Clinton Memo
Of special relevance: Several commenters mentioned the 1997 Clinton Administrative Order categorically disallowing waivers of Informed Consent in classified research. Linda Kmiotek, in a written comment, identifying herself as a victim of undisclosed, possibly Classified Research experimentation, reminded the Committee of previous Federal attempts to strengthen human subject protections in classified research:
“In October 1995, the Final Report of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments recommended “The adoption of Federal Policy requiring the informed consent of all human subjects of classified research and the requirement not be subject to exemption or waiver. Whereby in March 27, 1997, President Clinton issued an Administrative Order, Strengthened Protections for Human Subjects of Classified Research” [Federal Register, May 13, 1997, pp.26367-26372] For 18 years since that attempted rule making, an NPRM supposedly was never completed. Without hesitation, this Federal Policy should be implemented. We need more protections not less.” Linda Kmiotek, Public Comment, NPRM
Karla Smith, in her joint public comment for herself and Norman Rabin at SACHRP noted the Department of Energy’s recent intent to keep to the requirements for Informed Consent in the Clinton Memo, where legal counsel at the DOE stated the Memo still had legal effect:
“A recent legal opinion in 2015, obtained by the legal counsel of the U.S. Department of Energy, stated that the 1997 Clinton Memo still had legal effect. Earlier this year the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced its intent to adopt such a regulation with minor adjustments…
Karla Smith/Public Comment, NPRM, May 19/Presenting DOE’s compliance with the Clinton Memo
“On January 21, 2016 the DOE approved Notice 443.1 which states that supplemental requirements and responsibilities for classified human subjects research (HSR) are necessary to ensure compliance with Presidential Memorandum, Strengthened Protections for Human Subjects of Classified Research, dated March 27, 1997, commonly referred to as the “Clinton Memo,” which the DOE and NNSA Offices of General Counsel determined is in effect and applicable to DOE.
“Requirement 4.a.3 states “No waiver of informed consent will be granted.
“It is our hope that OHRP and HHS will take the initiative for other government agencies which comply with the Common Rule and follow the Department of Energy’s lead, and find that supplemental requirements and protections and responsibilities for classified human subjects research are necessary to ensure compliance with the Clinton Memo, and to fulfill the legal requirements and spirit of federal rulemaking.”
In Conclusion: The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. (Nuremberg Code)
Rebecca Skloot, in her December 2015 op-ed in the New York Times on the issue of consent in the case of remaindered biospecimens, an issue that was indeed discussed by SACHRP–in contrast to the Intelligence Surveillance exclusions, which was not—quoted from an optimistic researcher possibly dizzy from Federal funding, who sought to call human subjects “participants in research,” which appears to be a fashionable term today in the research community, and pointed out that Consent is the only way any human can be said to “participate” in research:
“In announcing plans for the $215 million Precision Medicine Initiative, which he sees as a model for other future research, Dr. Collins said, “Participants will be partners in research, not subjects.” But people can be partners only if they know they’re participating.” Rebecca Skloot: Your Cells. Their Research. Your Permission?
Alexandra Franco, JD: “Researchers are not entitled to conduct research; research is a privilege.”
This comment by Alexandra Franco, J.D. (2015, Institute for Science, Law and Technology [of] the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Chicago-Kent College of Law), draws our attention once more to the Nuremberg Code, and questions the very nature of research that uses human subjects.
“The rule of informed consent, its underlying principle of respecting people’s autonomous decision-making power and right to refuse to participate in research come from the troubled past of human subject experimentation of which the Nazi experiments are one of its most harrowing episodes.
“In fact, the Common Rule derives its principles from the Nuremberg Code, which resulted from the Nuremberg Trials. The Nuremberg Code states from the get-go: “the voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.”
“It is not hard to understand why it would be; the Nazi experiments were forcibly performed on subjects who did not have any ability to escape the atrocities that were being done to them in the name of research.
“The Nuremberg Trials that followed the end of the Nazi Holocaust set in writing what the essential elements of ethical research should be to prevent such atrocities from happening again.
“… While the Common Rule is denounced as “cumbersome and outdated” in light of the changes in research technology, we must take into consideration that the same flaws in human nature which prompted the creation of the Nuremberg Code remain unchanged.
“Therefore, the public’s desire for control over their own body as well as the data and samples deriving therefrom, should be the departing point of any changes to the Common Rule.
“People should be able to give full informed consent before researchers can use their data or biological samples for research purposes.
“Researchers are not entitled to conduct research; research is a privilege which the medical and scientific community enjoys as a result of people’s desire to willingly, intentionally and knowingly, give a little part of themselves for the betterment of mankind.” Alexandra Franco, J.D., Public Comment, NPRM
Anonymous Anonymous: “Nothing to do with National Security but a lot to do with Torture—and Torture is Unconstitutional”
To close, this comment by Anonymous Anonymous reminds us why the United States of America, which often decries the records of other countries in their violations of human rights, should care about Informed Consent, and why the Common Rule should not exclude Intelligence or military agencies or the DOJ from requiring Informed Consent:
“The Common Rule has to be based on the Constitution which is the blueprint of our democracy.
“No government agency or department should have the right to waive applicability of all or part of the Common Rule (including Informed Consent). The arbitrary use of such technologies has nothing to do with national security but a lot to do with torture, and torture is unconstitutional.
“It is necessary to send a strong message that our Constitution and human rights matter in America. Otherwise America is no better than China and other countries that America criticizes for not enforcing human rights.” Anonymous Anonymous, Public Comment, NPRM
Classified Research Continually Funded Although Public Continually Reports Inhumane Experimentation
We are experiencing a silent crisis of the Constitution and our basic human rights in the US today.
Karla Smith, Public Comment, May 19, 2016/Speaking about subdural neuro-implants
Karla Smith notes in a separate comment,”Congress provides billions of dollars in funding to intelligence and defense entities which fund classified research.”
When people are coming forward to report barbaric experimentation on their bodies while such “covered” research is being funded, it is time to openly challenge all aspects of such funding and research, hold the “covered entities” fully accountable, and reinstate basic protections for all citizens by fully requiring Informed Consent in all research, by all agencies and organizations, for whatever purpose, and reinstate the lost protections of the Nuremberg Code in our midst.
That is the message these public comments overwhelmingly convey.
Please take the time to watch the video coverage of the powerful and historic testimony given at SACHRP, and to read further all comments about non-consensual experimentation posted. Our future as a nation with a sense of decency, humanity, and moral principles relies ultimately on our own individual humanity, and how we each choose to respond to the devastating testimony of modern-day non-consensual human experimentation contained herein.
RELATED:
SACHRP Testimony
NIH/Video of SACHRP May 18 Meeting/Public Comments Towards End, start 6:21:15
NIH/Video of SACHRP May 19 Meeting/Public Comments Towards End, start 2:59:29
Dec 3 and Dec 4, 2015 SACHRP Meetings. Public Comments Toward End.
Oct 21 and Oct 22, 2015 SACHRP Meetings. Public Comments Toward End.
Supplemental Information: Non-Consensual Experimentation Victims Stakeholder Summary, Comments on NPRM/SACHRP
President’s Bioethics Commission Testimony/Reports
Presidential Bioethics Commission, edited to 30 minutes. Youtube video, Church Committee 2.0 Production, 2011.
Bioethics Commisssion Failed Obama’s Mandate in New Report. Cheryl Walsh/The Daily Censored, January 2012
Moral Science/Protecting Participants in Human Subjects Research. June 2012. Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.
The American Public Informs President Obama’s Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues About Ongoing Non-Consensual Human Experimentation in the USA Today. Ramola D, Washington’s Blog, March 12, 2016
Outlaw Nonconsensual Human Experiments Now –– Cheryl Walsh/Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
FURTHER RESOURCES:
Congress-Related, Public Meeting-Related:
President Clinton’s Memorandum of March 27, 1997–Strengthened Protections for Human Subjects of Classified Research. Federation of American Scientists.
Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE), Final Report Recommendations.
Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, Public Meeting, Tuesday, July 5, 1994, Presentation by Jay Katz.
Church Committee Reports: Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC) Public Library (Extensive online documentary archive on political assassinations, covert activities, and covert agencies)
Church Committee Report Book I: Foreign and Military Intelligence
Church Committee Report Book II: Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans
Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States, Report to the President (Rockefeller Commission Report), (Washington, U.S. GPO, June 1975). Ford Library Museum.
[Also: Rockefeller Commission Report, with separate pdfs of Chapters and Summaries, at the AARC.]
Gerald Ford White House Altered Rockefeller Commission Report in 1975; Removed Section on CIA Assassination Plots/White House Aide Dick Cheney Spearheaded Editing of Report to Dampen Impact/New Documents Cast Further Doubt on Commission’s Investigation, Independence. National Security Archive, February 29, 2016.
Access to Justice? Does DOJ’s Office of Inspector General Have Access to Information Needed to Conduct Proper Oversight?, hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, September 9. Federation of American Scientists/Government Secrecy.
DoD-Related
“New DoD Directive on Detainees Allows Sleep and Sensory Deprivation, Biometric IDs,” Invictus, September 17, 2014.
Department of Defense. Bioeffects of Selected Non-Lethal Weapons. (Obtained on FOIA request by Donald Friedman, Dec 13, 2006.)
Department of Defense (DoD) Directive 5240.1-R, Procedures Governing the Activities of DoD Intelligence Components that Affect United States Persons.
Department of Defense Instruction/Protection of Human Subjects and Adherence to Ethical Standards in DoD-Supported Research. Department of Defense, November 8, 2011
Nonlethal Technologies Become Lighter, More Potent, National Defense Industrial Association. National Defense Magazine, July 2014.
Microwave Harassment and Mind Control Experimentation–-Julianne McKinney, Director, Electronic Surveillance Project, Dec 1992
Department of Defense Directive (DoD) 5525.5: DoD Co-operation with Local Civilian Law Enforcement Officials
Department of Defense Directive (DoD) 3025.18: Defense Support of Local Authorities
Joint Chiefs of Staff. Joint Publication 3-60, Joint Doctrine for Targeting, 31 January 2013 .
Targeting. June 2006 United States Air Force. Supplements Joint Doctrine for Targeting 2002.
Electronic Warfare in Operations. FM 3-36. Department of the Army.
Radio Frequency Radiation Dosimetry Handbook. Carl Durney, PhD, Electrical Engineering Department, University of Utah. October, 1986.
CIA-Related
Dainius Puras and Juan E. Méndez, Letter to the U.S. Government, January 15, 2015, “Mandates of the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health and the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
Jeffrey Kaye, “SSCI Report Reveals CIA Torture Program Originated in Same Department as MKULTRA,” The Dissenter (now Shadowproof), December 11, 2014.
Global Alert by Alex Constantine, 1995. Hearing “Voices” The Hidden History of the CIA’s Electromagnetic Mind-Control Experiments
FBI gets a broader role in coordinating domestic intelligence activities. Washington Post, June 19, 2012
The CIA – at Home. Excerpted from the book, The Lawless State/The Crimes of the U.S. Intelligence Agencies, by Morton Halperin, Jerry Berman, Robert Borosage, Christine Marwick. Penguin Books, 1976
CIA Document: AR 2-2 Law and Policy Governing the Conduct of Intel Activities. (Obtained on FOIA lawsuit by ACLU and Yale Law School’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, June 2015.)
New Docs Raise Questions About CIA Spying Here at Home. Ashley Gorski, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project, June 15, 2015.
More About Intelligence Agencies (CIA/DNI) Spying. ACLU.
Colin A.Ross, The CIA Doctors: Human Rights Violations by American Psychiatrists. Manitou Communications, 2006.
Research-Related
Gerald S. Schatz, Are the Rationale and Regulatory System for Protecting Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research Obsolete and Unworkable, or Ethically Important but Inconvenient and Inadequately Enforced? Journal of Contemporary Health Law and Policy, Volume 20, Issue 1, 2003.
DNA is a Fractal Antenna, International Journal of Radiation Biology, 2011, April. Epub 2011, Feb 28.
Ortaine Devian’s comment on the ACLU article, Who’s Afraid of the Torture Report? (Links to various resources on Military Mind Control & Tesla Research, Radionics/Sonics, Government Secrecy.)
Robert Duncan, Regarding 6/10 NYT Article on Gang-Stalking & Targeted Individuals: “When Weapons Are “Field Tested” They Need To Be Very Secretive”
Dr. Robert Duncan: The Executive Summary: Neuropsychological and Electronic No-Touch Torture Report
Robert Duncan, The Matrix Deciphered. 2006.
Robert Duncan, Project Soulcatcher, Secrets of Cyber and Cybernetic Warfare Revealed, 2010.
The Invisible Third World War by W.H. Bowart and Richard Sutton. Posted online at Whale.to. 27.9.1990.
***
Ramola D is a writer and independent journalist with a background in science and literature researching issues in science, technology, and ethics relevant to our times, including issues related to Intelligence, Surveillance, Security, and Defense. She runs the solutions journalism site at The Everyday Concerned Citizen, and edits the online literary quarterly, Delphi Quarterly. Her literary journalism, fiction, and poetry have been published widely, more on this at her website. Please follow her online at @EccEveryday, or on Facebook.
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After a year, I was recruited into a systems integration company called CompuCom Systems to work in their San Francisco office. My first cousin had just left medical school and was living in the Bay Area at the time and when I explained Aerotek’s business model to him we decided to start our own company, Dedicated Onsite Consulting (DOC). We recruited two of my former colleagues from Aerotek to join us and together we grew the company from zero to $12 million in annual revenue in 4 years which was very similar to building a branch office for Aerotek.
Watermill quickly became the number one provider of consulting services to Business Objects (now SAP) for their $23 million-dollar global PeopleSoft Financials, ESA, ELM, Vantive, and Salesforce.com implementations and was leading an ERP implementation at Dassault Systemes America (which included SolidWorks). You can find all of this info along with a personal recommendation from Business Objects’ and Yahoo’s head of IT on my LinkedIn profile. Watermill was competing against firms like Accenture for projects and winning because it was lean which meant if could bill less than our competitors and pay higher rates to consultants.
Pawscorp.com allowed customers to donate 30-100% of the profit from over 4000 pet products to one of over 200 schools and 501(c)(3)s. We worked with American Humane, Goodwill, the YMCA, the Wounded Warrior Project, Rush Soccer and many more well-known organizations.
Transitions Expo was a college and career fair for underprivileged youth that benefited The Street School Network. For-profit and state schools/community colleges were represented under one roof.
After I lost my loft to foreclosure in 2010, I moved into a friend’s house who did a lot of traveling. I was alone most of the time so the Voice to Skullers created a treatment I call the vetting sessions. They knew my cousin’s wife was an environmental lawyer for the UN and her mother, Vera, was a world renowned international law school professor who wrote the ICJ advisory opinion on the legality of the separation wall in Palestine, Legal Consequences of a Separation Wall in Occupied Palestinian Territory, so they pretended that my inclusion in the torture program was causing a huge debate within the institution(s) heading the experiments.
My hotel was a couple blocks away from the Russian Embassy so the torture used that as an excuse to insert a new character, Vladimir Putin, into my treatments. Whenever I stepped into the bathroom, “Vladimir” would speak to me about the Cold War. He said my uncle John was a “person of interest” to the KGB back in the ’70s and ’80s (laughing). This Vladimir spoke perfect English so it wasn’t a very good imitation.
When I moved to Sihanoukville in southern Cambodia the torture went with me and built up an entire treatment about George Bush and Michelle Obama taking an interest in my case. When I rented a motorcycle and rode to Kompot and Bokor Mountain through some rural parts of southern Cambodia, the Voice to Skull talked to me the whole time.
The voices were perfectly clear in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi (and on the train from Ho Chi Minh to Hanoi). And when my uncle and dad convinced me to come back to the USA the Voice to Skullers told me on the airplane, “Chris thinks he’s coming back to Vietnam” which didn’t make any sense at the time because I had a girlfriend in Vietnam and had left half of my things there. When my dad had me locked up for the psych evaluation I realized what they meant. Fortunately, I was released after 13 days and I went back to Vietnam (with a delusional diagnosis).
