The latest scandal surrounding a video of an undercover video of Planned Parenthood discussing selling of aborted body parts or fetuses raises major questions about the ethics of how research is funded and whether or not the benefits are disclosed to the public or not, and many other issues surrounding research on fetuses as well as people, since there is much more of this going on than most people realize.
The vast majority of the benefits from research is provided to the wealthiest while, like many other issues, the vast majority of the burden is put on the poor and they rarely if ever fully understand what is going on so they're unable to stand up for their rights or expose what is going on.
Abortion is one of the more popular single issue subjects that divide people into two positions that never get resolved; and like most if not all others both sides follow the leaders from the ruling class that ignore inconvenient issues and help preserve the duopoly system that suppresses grass roots movements.
By refusing to call for full disclosure both sides are enabling the ruling class to control any benefits that might come from this research but if the abortion opponents succeed in cutting funding to Planned Parenthood then it will only give multinational corporations even more control of the health care or lack of health care available for the poor.
Both sides claim they're looking out for the best interest of the poor but neither call for full disclosure of how research is funded or protecting the poor from being used as research subjects without making sure they understand what the risks are. Nor are either sides calling for the benefits of the research to be available for everyone by reviewing and reforming intellectual property or propriety information laws that enable those that do the research to declare ownership of the information gained by it and charge high prices for medical procedures that the poor who contribute to research often can't afford. Furthermore by keeping research information secret it make it more difficult for researchers to share information and improve their own research.
One important thing that is rarely if ever discussed is that even though Planned Parenthood is a nonprofit organization they deal with for profit organizations that often do the medical research and are enabling their large profits without necessarily requiring that they make health care affordable to the majority. These profits are increased thanks to donations from people with good intentions that don't realize the public is not necessarily going to be the primary beneficiaries of the research. These multinational health care corporations are making enormous profits but they're not being discussed at all. The benefits from this research are often patented so that they can gouge consumers and withhold affordable care while Planned Parenthood takes all the blame for research that is done.
The claim that they need these patents to fund research doesn't stand up to scrutiny when considering that tehy spend much more on advertising than they do on research and they don't provide full disclosure.
Ironically there is a common alliance with the business community with both Planned Parenthood, which provides them with research opportunities, and right wing organizations, including the antiabortion movement, that often enables them to advance their political agenda.
Yet this isn't being mentioned at all by either side, at least not in any high profile manner.
Many of these poor people donate their tissue based on the assumption that it will be done for everyone's benefit; however the multinational corporations that control the research, often done with little scrutiny by the majority of the public routinely put profit ahead of the health of the majority of the public. Somehow they manage to avoid much if any criticism for their activities, and this debate is being used to threaten their funding of health care for the poor even more.
Like many other debates it is narrowly defined and the majority of the public is expected to jump on one band wagon or another even though neither bandwagons often discuss some of the most important issues.
Another major issue that is almost never discussed in a high profile manner is why the antiabortion movement is often so fanatical. This is highly unfortunate because Planned Parenthood is in a good positions to improve this in the long term by counseling parents against child abuse which often leads to escalating violence and indoctrination. In fact they already do this but they rarely discuss this in a high profile manner.
The majority of abortion opponents, especially high profile one, claim to be concerned about protecting life yet many of them oppose programs that enable parents to do a good job providing for their children after they're born; Planned Parenthood does much better that that. They also oppose efforts to protect the environment, which will protect much more lives than their opposition to abortion. And they're often among the strongest supporters of many wars based on lies that are handed to them by their political and religious leaders.
There are some exceptions but they tend to be much lower profile; but the people that do take these positions, often with an enormous amount of emotional outrage, and without listening to any contradictions aren't really pro-life.
They're essentially an antiabortion cult.
The rush to jump on one bandwagon or another without considering many related issues prevents any resolution of their disagreements from occurring indefinitely and enables this dispute to be used for political purposes for decades without resolving anything.
Planned Parenthood would be much more successful at getting their views across if they did more to educate both the public and their patrons about how early abuse in childhood leads to more abuse later in life and is also a major reason why their opposition is so thoroughly indoctrinated to believe what their leaders tell them to believe as I explained in several posts including Dobson’s Indoctrination Machine. It's actually the media that is more responsible for the incredibly bad job they do educating the public about this; they're in a much better job to conduct Public relation campaign for child abuse prevention. If more people understand how this leads people to be more susceptible to propaganda then it would be much more difficult for the mainstream media and political establishment to divide people into two camps on any one issue and prevent them from considering many of the most important issues that might be related.
As I indicated in a previous post Human Research Subjects being used without full disclosure is much more common than most people realize and it isn't always kept completely secret. In many cases they disclose some of the most important information, but they decline to put it in the full perspective. Often they do the research but simply decline to refer to it that way and don't share the educational information with most of the public or use it to base policy decisions, or at least not for the benefit of the public. My previous article on the subject refers to controlled research projects which is the typical laboratory study where they control as much as they can and study the rest; and field research where they study what happens without controlling it, although the academic community may not always use the same terms.
One of the simplest examples of a field research project is when energy companies pollute the environment in areas where the poorest live then researchers, often with good intentions and unrelated to energy companies, come in after the fact and study higher disease rates. The anti-abortion groups don't express much if any concern about this at all or how it threatens life. If anything they often support the bossiness leaders who often work with religious leaders, as discussed in the previous post about James Dobson. These business leaders get their share of Lamborghini's but the research is often ignored by the media and the political establishment.
Research using the poor to experiment on goes much farther than what Planned Parenthood is doing and most of it isn't being disclosed properly; which is all the more reason why it should be discussed more in public and full disclosure should be required from all institutions involved in it. In “Medical Apartheid” (PDF at Original People) Harriet Washington discusses how they often use those with the least political power, black people, while those with the most get the benefits of the research and a large portion of it isn't nearly as effective since it is done in secrecy with little peer review. A lot of what she reports on is old research and supposedly ethics have improved significantly since then.
If this is true then there should be no reason to keep it secret.
If they feel the need to keep it secret then it might raise doubts about whether ethics really have improved as much as they claim.
Relying on Planned Parenthood for their research volunteers continues the practice of using poor people for research subjects while the rich control the benefits.
If, on the other hand they disclosed their research and did a better job informing the public about how we benefit from it, then Planned Parenthood would actually enable themselves to make a case that they're pro-life, since they're contributing to improved science that saves lives. Also there have been some reports that indicate that by advising their patrons on how to plan for Parenthood then they can enable them to avoid getting pregnant in the first place reducing the need for abortion in the first place. I'm quite certain I have read studies saying this is the case, although it isn't mentioned often in the debate at all.
Fully discussing the issues would do much more to benefit Planned Parenthood and health care for everyone; but we can't rely on political appointees to do this for us. If they were willing to do so they would have already done it. Like most other supposedly non profit organizations Planned Parenthood is run by someone from the political establishment, Cecile Richards, daughter of Ann Richard. This is typical; other organizations controlled by politicians include Roger Goodall Commissioner of the National Football League; Elizabeth Dole once ran the National Red Cross and Christine MacDonald reported about how most if not all major environmental organizations are run by people from the political ruling class. I have no doubt that a more thorough search will show that most other supposedly non-profits are also run by people with connections to multinational corporations, as I indicated in previous posts about "The existence of a ruling class being undeniable" very few powerful institutions are controlled at the grass roots level and most of them are controlled by the same class of people.
This small percentage of the public has been supporting the duopoly for decades and rigging it so that candidates that truly do represent the public can't get much if any coverage. Bernie Sanders seems to be the exception right no, but only because there has been an enormous amount of grassroots pressure that the MSM can't ignore. Hillary Clinton has come out in support of Planned Parenthood but she also supports the multinational corporations that profit from these experiments and doesn't even talk about calling for disclosure or informing the public about better health care opportunities that might involve Single Payer or more reliable funding for fully disclosed research that doesn't enable health care corporations to gouge the public while providing inferior care.
The political leaders ask us to "stand with Planned Parenthood," without addressing some of the most important issues; however I doubt if many of their supporters are as likely to blindly believe everything their leaders tell them to as the supporters of the antiabortion movement who aren't concerned about protecting life from environmental destruction war or disease. This is just as well since if they did they would run the risk of becoming similar to a pro-choice cult opposing an antiabortion cult. Unfortunately even if most people at the grass roots level aren't cult followers the rhetoric supported by their leaders is encouraging people to fall into the usual partisan positions without discussing legitimate issues.
If Grassroots people controlled the discussion they could use this as an opportunity to call for major reforms that hold these corporations accountable instead of letting Planned Parenthood be used as a scapegoat.
Edit: Since I first posted this Rep. Jason Chaffetz Took Issue With Planned Parenthood Chief Cecile Richards' Salary (09/29/2015) which rose from $353,000 in 2009 to $590,928 in 2013. Democrats were outraged that he complained about this salary which most people would consider enormous, since he had no objections to private sector salaries which were much higher even when they were implicated in corrupt activity. The outrage by Democrats might seem partially justified but many people that have no opportunity to get political appointments with huge salaries might think that compensation for those that do is unjustifiable and not based on merit at all.
This is a common problem which Christine MacDonald wrote about in "Green Inc." where heads of environmental organizations were paid enormous amounts of money and got their jobs because of their political connections; then they provided propaganda for corporations that were polluting the environment while doing little to protect it. The same thing clearly seems to be happening in other non-profit organizations including Planned Parenthood where Cecile Richards is making an enormous amount of money at a job she got thanks to political connections. She is being portrayed as a defender of the poor but a lot of the money that could be used to help poor is going to her salary even if CEOs get more than they deserve as well; and she remains silent about the enormous profits that corporations that buy fetal tissue for research make.
Even though Planned Parenthood is supposedly not making profits off the research they are and she covers for them.
The following are related articles including some about the Planned Parenthood scandal as well as more about other research experiments that get very little attention from the mainstream media.
Kirsten Powers: Crush Planned Parenthood 07/22/2015
Shock Video Catches Another Top Planned Parenthood Doctor Selling Body Parts of Aborted Babies
Planned Parenthood Sexual Health Evaluation Study
Wikipedia: Unethical human experimentation in the United States
Top 10 Evil Human Experiments
The 30 Most Disturbing Human Experiments in History
A History Of US Secret Human Experimentation
CIA torture appears to have broken spy agency rule on human experimentation
Christian Family Life Education: A Guide for Teaching about Adolescent Sexuality and Reproductive Health
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