If Liz were Queen

When Mrs. Lieberman signed on with the Hill & Knowlton in March of 2005, GlaxoSmithKline, the huge British-based drug company that makes vaccines along with many other drugs was among their clients.  In April of 2005, a month after his wife joined Hill and Knowlton Senator Lieberman introduced a bill that would award billions of dollars in new “incentives” to companies like GlaxoSmithKline to persuade them to make more new vaccines. The bill was written by Chuck Ludlan, a former pharmaceutical industry lobbyist who then worked on the Connecticut senator’s staff. From his office to his bedroom, Lieberman is totally surrounded by current and former employees of Big Pharma. SOURCE

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And what kinds of nasty tricks do big Pharma pull?–big Pharma like GlaxoSmithKline who work hand in glove with the Liebermans and meet behind closed doors with the President of the United States and his Clinton administration ratpack.

Orphans as young as three months old were used as test subjects in AIDS drug trials in New York’s Incarnation Children’s Center. The Center, which is run by Catholic Charities, specializes in treating HIV sufferers, and the drug trials were performed on children with HIV or who were born to HIV-positive mothers. The New York City Health Department is looking into claims that more than 100 children at Incarnation were used in as many as 36 experiments. Most of these experiments were sponsored by federal agencies such as the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Documents obtained by the UK Observer have implicated British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline’s involvement in at least four experiments conducted at Incarnation since 1995 using black and Hispanic children. Several trials were conducted to test the toxicity of AIDS drugs. In one trial, children as young as four received a high-dosage cocktail of seven drugs; another tested the reaction of six-month-olds to a double dosage of a measles vaccine. Other studies conducted on children included testing AZT, which can carry dangerous side effects, as well as testing the long term safety of anti-bacterial drugs on six-month old babies. GlaxoSmithKline also used children to “obtain tolerance, safety and pharmacokinetic data” for Herpes drugs.

[I wonder what Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel would think if their children were subject to tests by GlaxoSmithKline? Of course we will never know because their children have rich parents who don't even allow their children to suffer the horrible underfunded public school system that the majority of American children must attend. Hell, the annual tuition that the Obamas and Emanuels pay for their children's private schools exceeds the average annual income of many American families of four.]

The medical community has defended these studies, saying it enabled children, normally without access to treatment, the opportunity to receive AIDS drugs. However, many, outraged at these studies, argue there is a difference between providing children with the latest AIDS drugs and using them for experimentation. According to Antony Barnett, several experiments were considered to be Phase 1 trials, which are among the most dangerous. These drugs are similar to those used in chemotherapy and carry serious side effects. Critics also argue that it is difficult to test babies for HIV, and results are often incorrect; therefore many of these trials may have been conducted on babies or children not actually infected with HIV.

SOURCES: U K Observer, Title: “GlaxoSmithKline Allegedly Used Children as Laboratory Animals,” Author: Antony Barnett. Barnett’s article is based on the original research of Liam Scheff which can be viewed at: http://www.altheal.org/texts/house.htm; Democracy Now! December 2004, Title: “Guinea Pig Kids: How New York City is Using Children to Test Experimental AIDS Drugs”

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Remember, people like Lieberman, Max Baucus, Chuck Grassley get to vote and influence how big the profits of big Pharma grow–of course they also get a share of the pie.

How is this not an evil self-serving conflict of interests?