by Jack Bragen
The U.S. government has a 239-year history of medical experimentation on human beings without our knowledge or consent, beginning with unethical experiments that were conducted on slaves. In some instances, mutilating surgeries were performed without anesthesia.
Experiments have been conducted by the military, in secret, on U.S. soldiers, citizens and entire towns. Experiments have been conducted by physicians — people in whom we have put our trust — on African American people, on children, on the disabled, and on those less able to speak up on their own behalf.
It is a shocking and disgraceful legacy. People have been unknowingly exposed to radiation. People have been intentionally infected with pathogens without being told of this. People have been infected with syphilis, not informed and not treated. People with mental illness have been exposed to LSD. A man forced into a study comparing three of the newer “atypical antipsychotics” committed suicide.
After only a brief amount of research, I found massive piles of literature reporting on unethical experimentation on humans in the United States. To even begin to report on this subject would take years.
So, drawing on my own experiences as a mental health consumer, I will narrow my focus and report on some recent cases of medical experimentation involving people with mental health issues.
It is clear that the American people are considered a giant pool of experimental subjects for drug companies. Persons diagnosed with mental illness — those who are marginalized in society and who often cannot speak on our own behalf — are experimented upon, often without our consent and against our own best interests. In some instances, this is considered legal.
In the name of science, doctors have experimented for many decades on mentally ill people and continue to do so today. In some instances, this is done without our informed consent or knowledge.
When the massively wealthy drug companies come out with new medications for mentally ill people to take, the long-term side effects are not known until people have been exposed to these medications for ten years or more.
In recent years, “atypical antipsychotic” drugs were widely prescribed to people, and it was asserted falsely that these powerful drugs didn’t cause extrapyramidal side effects, including tardive dyskinesia and other harmful symptoms.
Tardive dyskinesia is a disfiguring disability that involves involuntary movements of the tongue, mouth, face and neck. Much of the time it is irreversible, and may continue to afflict patients even when antipsychotic medication is discontinued.
When I began Zyprexa, one of the widely prescribed atypical antipsychotic drugs, I was at a normal weight and I was quite healthy. Over time, I gained more and more weight, about ten pounds per year, until I became a hundred pounds overweight. I became diabetic. Patients often are not warned that massive weight gain and diabetes are common outcomes.
I continue to take this medication because it works well for me in controlling aggression, and in calming me down. However, now I have cut out about 90 percent of the refined sugar from my diet, and I am sure to get in a fair amount of fruits and vegetables. I’ve lost about 30 pounds of the weight, and my blood sugar has gone down. I am an example of someone who has narrowly averted a health disaster. I know of others less fortunate.
In addition, typical diabetes medications may cause weight gain over time because they work to move blood sugar from the bloodstream and into the body’s cells. The sugar has to go somewhere, and diabetes medications cause the sugar to be more efficiently metabolized. Thus, in the long run, diabetes medications can perpetuate the disease, because they worsen the root cause of the disease: weight.
If you watch any television at all, perhaps you have seen the endless advertisements for newly patented medications. Because of laws that require disclosure of side effects, we hear of a multitude of possible side effects. Drugs used to treat autoimmune diseases such as arthritis work by means of weakening the immune system, and thus, patients are subject to deadly infections.
Antipsychotic medications are now being promoted as a way of fighting depression. This works by suppressing the higher mental functions, and the resultant neurological damage is a very serious consequence of treating depression via a chemical suppression of the mind. In some cases, perhaps the depressed person is still depressed but is no longer aware of it, or is now unable to express it. But these antipsychotic drugs do their work by damaging the higher functions of the mind, so much so that they are referred to as “mind-damaging neuroleptics.”
The American people are being railroaded into taking numerous medications which have complications that may trigger further illness, and end up necessitating more medications. This situation isn’t limited to people with mental health issues.
The motive could be some kind of grand plan for social engineering, or simply the endless pursuit of massive profits by the pharmaceutical industry. I don’t know what is behind it. However, at this point, the U.S. has an epidemic, not of a communicable disease, but rather one of ill health due to excessive drugging.