We're Using Children For Research, Without Accepting The Benefits!

We've been using children for research, without accepting the benefits for at least forty years, intentionally or not, although in most cases the official reasons for doing this aren't intended to be for research, but it's happening that way anyway. These research projects are well documented in many academic journals, good non-fiction books, or alternative media, but there's virtually no effort to inform the public about the best research or using it to make political decisions, even though it would save thousands, if not millions of lives, solve an enormous amount of social problems, and, in many cases save much more money than it costs. Some of this research goes back at least to the nineteenth century, if not much earlier; however, in most cases, the peer-review process wasn't nearly as good as modern academic work, and there's historical evidence showing it was often overruled by fiscal ideology of the wealthy. Modern research confirms some of the simple and obvious conclusions of these researchers, including the fact that early intervention to help people is far more effective than waiting for problems to escalate, but fiscal ideology of the wealthy often still overrules the best research or prevents it from being covered in traditional media.

The best academic research is constantly improving, especially since World War II, and it has become much better organized in the past forty years, but most people are still not aware of it, largely because traditional media ignores it, and politicians still refuse to use this research to solve social problems, even though there's no doubt violence could be greatly reduced, many other social problems can be solved, and an enormous amount of money can be saved, since it's much less expensive to prevent problems from escalating than to wait until they get much worse and cost much more to address.

You would think fiscal conservatives would be willing to spend on programs that save much more than they cost. I have no doubt that real fiscal conservatives would do just that; however, most politicians that claim to be fiscal conservatives refuse to acknowledge the best research, fund social programs that work, but then when problems escalate the demand we spend much larger amounts of money on police, courts and prisons, even though there's no doubt these don't work nearly as well as the programs they claimed we couldn't afford.

In some ways the oldest research and some of the basic principles they knew about that have been confirmed repeatedly are the strongest evidence of political bias corrupting research; however, since some of this doesn't meet modern standards it has it's limits or flaws. However, some of the research between the sixties and nineties may be as helpful if not more, since it often does much better to meet common scientific standards, and has much stronger evidence, and one of the best sources that I know of from that time period is Lisbeth Schorr "Within Our Reach: Breaking the Cycle of Disadvantage" 1988, which shows an enormous amount of research on programs that have repeatedly shown that prevention programs are far less expensive and more effective than ignoring social problems before they escalate. There have been additional researchers since then confirming a lot of her work, including some that I've sited previously by Professor James Garbarino, Dr. Robert John Zagar and many more who have also provided additional research confirming prevention and education is far more effective than cutting funds for social programs and increasing funds for police and courts. Schorr also showed that in some cases the political establishment tried to suppress scientific research that contradicts their ideology and only partly succeeded, as the following excerpt shows:

Lisbeth Schorr "Within Our Reach" 1988 p.128-30

Despite such problems, every one of the successful prenatal care programs described earlier identified WIC as a critical ingredient in improving the health of the mothers and babies in their care. These local program reports corroborate earlier studies which found the WIC program to be effective in improving health and cost-effective as well, particularly because the food supplements were instrumental in reducing the incidence of low birth-weight and therefore the need for expensive neonatal intensive care.

One major researcher in the field, however, continued to be skeptical. Dr. David Rush, pediatrician and epidemiologist, had published extensive critiques of several of the major studies of the effects of the WIC program, finding them methodologically flawed and calling for more and better research. It seemed not surprising, therefore, that the Department of Agriculture, having called early in the Reagan Administration for a 30 percent cut in WIC funds, engaged Dr. Rush to conduct a massive evaluation of WIC.s program performance and health benefits. The $5 million contract called for four concurrent studies over a five-year period. This most comprehensive evaluation of WIC ever undertaken was completed in 1985, but then, to the amazement of Dr. Rush and his colleagues, the Department of Agriculture refused to release it. A year of pressure, threats, and entreaties finally pried loose the five volume report, but without the Executive Summary and the Chapter Summaries, which the department ordered deleted. The reason soon became apparent—the report found unequivocally that WIC had made impressive contributions to women's and children's health. The New York Times stated editorially that the Agriculture Department "is willing to work more diligently to keep findings—that so simple an undertaking [as WIC] can produce such spectacular results—from the public than it is to get food and medical attention to mothers who need it."

Among the study's findings:

* WIC participation reduces premature births among high-risk mothers by 15 to 25 percent.

* WIC participation helps bring more women into prenatal care earlier in their pregnancy and increases the likelihood that they will have the desirable number of prenatal visits.

* WIC participation raises the chances that children will have a regular source of medical care and be better immunized.

* WIC participation has the largest impact among minorities and the least well educated. Among children, the greatest benefits are reaped by those who are poor, small of stature, black, and in single-parent families.

The study also found promising, although not conclusive, evidence of improved cognitive development among infants of participating WIC mothers and among preschoolers who became WIC participants as infants. Further, probably reflecting the program's nutrition education efforts, WIC families were found to purchase and consume more nutritious food than comparable non-WIC families. There was also a significant relationship between the quality of the local WIC program, as judged by state WIC directors, and increased birth-weight.
Complete article

Shortly after this Lisbeth Schorr writes, "That many children suffer under current health arrangements is less because of villainy than because so many of the crucial decisions are simply never made." p.138 This may be partly true; however, a large part of the problem, as she indicates at times, is intentional deception by the political establishment, like when they tried to suppress the report previously mentioned, which was released after a year, but after it went through a temporary news cycle it was largely forgotten. This is just one of many cases where they refuse to implement solutions even when they save far more money than they cost, but the evidence is often buried in obscure news articles or books that are quickly forgotten by the majority of the public. There are many more examples of possible villainy in efforts to suppress solutions, including some that Lisbeth Schorr describes throughout her book, without using that word, and examples provided in "Rachel and Her Children" by Jonathan Kozol 1987 which Schorr might have been aware of, and many more since then including when George W Bush misrepresented The Texas Miracle 08/23/2004 during his presidential campaign, and more recently when Mississippi Used Welfare Money To Pay Brett Favre 09/03/2022 in most cases these examples of villainy involve rich people suppressing funds for effective programs to help the poor, even though they work effectively and also help everyone in society.

The most effective studies routinely only get news coverage for brief periods of time, while propaganda from people that pretend to be fiscal conservatives is repeated over and over again, even though if they were real fiscal conservatives they wouldn't hesitate to spend money on programs that save more than they cost, often far more. Lisbeth Schorr provides many more examples in her book of programs that save far more than they cost, and many other studies since then add to the evidence that spending on early prevention is far more cost effective than ignoring social problems until they get worse. On p.66 she writes about how Dr. Ann Wilson explains that eight infants who received no prenatal care were admitted to the emergency room at the expense of the state, costing over half a million dollars, and one was readmitted costing another $100,000 and at least one more would need additional care at the expense of the state for life, but half the amount they spent on these eight babies could have provided prenatal care for all the poor women in the state that couldn't afford it, which would probably have prevented most if not all of these expenses, plus much more for smaller expenses that may not have been documented; on p.80 she describes a study mentioned by Governor Riley of South Carolina where they allegedly saved $100,000 for every $1,000 they spent; and on p.160 she explains they saved five to six dollars for every one dollar spent on a Homebuilders program in Tacoma Washington; and there are many more examples where she doesn't have exact dollar savings, but it's clear that they're significant anyway.

Schorr also describes dozens more programs, often accompanied by studies to see how effective they are, even if many of them don't calculate how much money was saved, including research showing that "Resource mothers" in South Carolina helping at risk teen mothers are much more successful that control mothers that don't have this help, home visitors in many other parts of the country, including one project in Elmira New York showing they're very effective, research on Head Start, and many more, even research where they intentionally separated Rhesus monkey's from their mothers at crucial times and found that the babies were not capable of caring for their own babies when they grew up. This conclusion has been confirmed with research from many other sources showing it also applies to other animals including Chimpanzees, as Jane Goodall reported, and many other researchers showed applied to people as well, although there are few if any research projects where the mother and child were separated for research purposes, but plenty of research into situations where they were separated for other purposes, often for outrageous purposes, like enslavement, or more recently efforts to deprive poor people of educational and economic opportunities, forcing them into abandoned inner cities where they live in desperation. And even if most of the studies from that time didn't focus solely on how much money was saved other more recent studies do including many done by Dr. Robert John Zagar, which are pointed out in Delinquency Best Treatments: How to Divert Youths from Violence While Saving Lives and Detention Costs 2013 which shows that all the programs he studied saved more money than they cost, mostly at least six to ten dollars or much more, up to ninety-eight dollars for one program, for every dollar spent on the preventive programs.

Among credible academics it's almost universally believed that many of these programs are effective and save far more than they cost, while also solving social problems, including Dr. Edward Ziglar; however, he has indicated that these programs shouldn't be the only part of the solution as he indicated in the Forward for the 1990 edition of the "Handbook of Early Childhood Intervention," when he wrote the following, which was cited in several other good sources:

The problems of many families will not be solved by early intervention efforts, but only by changes in the basic features of the infrastructure of our society. No amount of counseling, early childhood curricula, or home visits will take the place of jobs that provide decent incomes, affordable housing, appropriate health care, optimal family configurations, or integrated neighborhoods where children encounter positive role models.

This was cited in "Children in Danger" J Garbarino; N Dubrow; K Kostelny; C Pardo 1992 p. 118 and Preventing Violence in America - 1996 Page 240 There's no doubt that Dr. Zigler was right and there has been an enormous amount of evidence to support his conclusions long before he wrote this, and plenty of additional evidence to support his conclusions that came with additional research after he wrote this. However, for one reason or another, he didn't repeat this statement in the Forward for the 2000 edition of the same book, which I saved in screen shots at the end of this article, but did include more studies showing that these programs, which are in important part of the solution, even without the full reform we need save at least four to seven dollars for every dollar spent on them. There should be no doubt that in order for people to function properly, especially disadvantaged children, we need a social, education and economic system that enables people to learn how to earn a fair income that can serve their interests; however, throughout history there have been many times where we had economic systems that deprived large numbers of people of the necessities of life, including when slavery was still legal, and it led to a lot of violence, during labor wars after the Civil War, and in the first half of the century, and now, especially in abandoned inner cities, where wages are suppressed, and if people can get any work, it doesn't pay enough to support their families, setting the stage for crime. This is part of the evidence showing that economic reform also need to be part of the solution; but there's even more evidence from history, some described by Stacy Patton when she traces child abuse back to slave years, in "Spare the Kids," with supporting evidence from Frederick Douglass's diaries, and "All God's Children" by Fox Butterfield. Additional evidence was described by Stefan Kanfer in the following excerpts of "The Last Empire: De Beers, Diamonds, and the World," 1995:

He would import Chinese workers. The low priced coolies would be locked into three-year pacts, instead of the familiar three-month contracts. As bizarre as this sounded, the Imperial Government in Peking announced its enthusiastic approval. White laborers were aghast. Furious demonstrations against the “yellow peril” took place on the streets and squares until Sir George Farrar, president of the Chamber, issued a reassuring statement. Asians would “only be brought in under government control, and only as unskilled laborers, prohibited to trade, prohibited to hold land or compete with any white man.” Yet an iron tone underlay his words. Sir George made it abundantly clear that nothing could dissuade him from bringing coolies to South Africa. Without them the mining industry would be crippled. It might even fold, along with thousands of positions for whites. P.168

… No one bothered to ask the Asians what they thought about the situation, but their feelings may easily be guessed. From the moment they stepped on foreign soil, coolies could feel the resentment seething from both black and white onlookers. Other than shouted orders, no communication took place between races, and the Chinese withdrew into their own sullen and insular society. They passed their time in the crowded compounds smoking opium, gambling, and fighting. Sometimes arguments erupted into violence and murder; sometimes the violence took place away from the compound, when coolies broke out and attempted to rob a local farmer. To the ruling powers, crime was a small price to pay for a revived mining industry. Milner’s plan went down in their diaries and bankbook as a success.

So it was until the repercussions began. ... p.169

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The natives–two thirds of the population–would be relocated onto 22 million acres. To outsiders this seemed an enormous land grant; what it actually meant was that 65 percent of South African humanity was being forced onto 7 percent of the country. … After the law was passed the natives, taken from productive farms, would be left without any means of support. The government and the Randlords were counting on that; sooner or later blacks would have to turn to the mining fields, digging up gold and diamonds.

Originally Plaatje had trusted the liberal English speakers. Now he spoke out indignantly: “If anyone had told us at the beginning that a majority of members of the Union parliament was capable of passing a law … whose object is to prevent natives from ever rising above the position of servants to whites we would have regarded that person as a fit for the lunatic asylum.”

The act had swift and tragic consequences. Hardly any funds were provided for the adjustment period, and the native farm system totally collapsed. Poverty, with all its concomitants, took over. Infant mortality rose: every fifth child died in its first year. Crime became rampant. Blacks could neither go backward nor forward; their immemorial customs and common laws were shattered, yet their education was left to the ill-equipped missionary societies. Untrained, geographically limited, hampered by selective pass laws and taxes, the natives crowded back into the compounds. p.187-8

These events took place in the first couple decades of the twentieth century, and Kanfer claims or implies that they knew their actions to import virtual slave labor to maximize profits among the ruling class was a direct cause of the crime, but the victims were almost always other poor people, with a few occasions where middle classes were targeted, but the rich had enough guards so they rarely had to worry about it, and when the middle class was a victim they blamed it on the poor. There's no shortage of additional evidence showing that a rigged economy leaves a large number of people destitute, inevitably leading to higher crime or other social problems, including lack of health care, pollution, inadequate education of child care and much more. Recently I pointed out that one-hundred-twenty-nine cities in the United States have double the national average murder rates, with just over 10% of the population and just over 40% of the murders, and they're almost all low income cities with little money to fund education or other necessities. These cities contribute a large percentage to the prison population, which costs much more than it would to educate children and provide them with child care earlier in life, which would prevent an enormous amount of crime and make prison, police and court costs much lower, saving far more than preventive programs cost. I also posted several times that some polls cover the same or similar issues and show that large majorities of the public support spending on programs that solve social problems, or policies that reduce income inequality and epidemic corporate fraud and a rigged economy, yet the politicians routinely take the side of their campaign contributors and reject these popular policies; the most recent time I posted these polls was in Oligarchs Have A Right To Profit From negligent Mass Murder; While Peaceful Protesters Are Arrested!

The polls don't perfectly align with all the research about how to prevent violence or solve other social problems, which is not surprising, since the media rarely covers the best research and may people aren't aware of it; however, even though many people haven't heard about the best research there is a large amount of support for many issues that solve social problems and save money for everyone, except, possibly, the oligarchs profiting off a rigged economy. This includes large majorities supporting Medicare for All, universal child care, improved education, reduced pollution, protecting jobs over profits, and opposition to various ways the wealthy rig the economy and wars based on lies?

If the science and the will of the people are all on the same side, or somewhat close, why is the entire political establishment opposed to all these popular policies which have been proven to solve problems, save money, and have large support from the majority of the public?

This question isn't even asked, let alone answered by the media or political establishment; however, the evidence overwhelmingly indicates they're accountable to wealthy campaign donors, not the people, and since the media refuses to cover honest candidates for various offices unless they get donations from Wall Street corporations, they never get the name recognition they need to get elected!

For anyone that pays attention to good alternative media, which mainstream media doesn't cover, there's an enormous amount of evidence showing the political establishment is far more concerned with controlling the public than in serving their best interests, and that they've adopted a Machiavellian right wing ideology, even when some of the media pundits or politicians pretend to be progressive or serve the interests of the public. Niccolò Machiavelli recommended that those in power should "keep the citizens poor," he also recommended that rulers should try to convince the citizens to love and fear them, but that it is better to be feared than loved, if the rulers couldn't have both. Another one of his recommendations is to use wars to inspire support, all of which our political establishment has been doing for decades, if not hundreds of years.

Another compelling piece of evidence is the Powell Memo, which was first reported in traditional media for a brief period of time about fifty years ago, then quickly forgotten, but there's been a monumental amount of evidence, especially in alternative media, to show that the wealthy have been following this agenda, along with some variations, ever since. This is still published at Greenpeace, which also links to their own assessment of the Memo at The Lewis Powell Memo: A Corporate Blueprint to Dominate Democracy And about sixteen months ago Sheldon Whitehouse began a series of speeches in the Senate The Powell Memo Sheldon Whitehouse: The Scheme, first part of continuing speech 05/27/2021 Pt. 2 Pt. 3 Pts. 4-16 and counting. The text for his 17th speech on this subject isn't available yet, but the video is 08/03/2022 and 18th has just come out 09/13/2022 I'm not sure Sheldon Whitehouse is the best person to cover the Powell Memo and other factors exposing right wing fraud, but he is among the best within the political establishment, and even after 18 speeches the vast majority of traditional media hasn't given this any coverage. If you check Google Books and look up the Powell Memo you'll find many authors covering it, most far better than traditional media, including Hendrick Smith, who is among the best on this subject that I know of who wrote Who Stole The American Dream 2012 almost ten years ago to the day, describing how our government is being controlled by right wing Wall Street extremists.

In short, the Powell Memo describes what he called an "Attack on American Free Enterprise System," but it's full of a lot of false claims, or implied claims. In many cases he doesn't make specific claims; for example, he repeatedly claims or implies that there are a lot of false claims that corporations are profiting off of pollution which is killing people in poor areas, although he doesn't cite specifics. He also claimed or implied that protests about the Vietnam War were part of an attack on the Free Enterprise System, but these protests had legitimate democratic motives, including the fact that the War was based mostly on lies, like a large portion of his Memo; the Vietnamese were our allies helping to defeat Japan during World War II based on the claim that we were fighting to defend democracy, and they signed their own Declaration of Independence on September 2 1945. We didn't invade Vietnam to defend democracy, but to suppress it. The memo also claims or implies that the wealthy are somehow victims of modern reform movements, yet they were still much wealthier than the majority, keeping a large share of profits earned by working class people. Powell was a lawyer for the tobacco companies, and helped them profit by addicting people, while denying the damage being done; he does the same when denying how a rigged economy keeping a large number of people destitute, and victims of massive pollution, while the wealthy profit from this destruction.

He also claims that there are people who "preferred socialism or some form of statism (communism or fascism)," which is, for the most part, false, especially the claim that people preferred communism or fascism, the last of which is very ironic. First of all, there's nothing wrong with some versions of Socialism, even if the establishment constantly misrepresents it. Northern Europe, Canada, Australia, and several other countries have some versions of Socialism, and they often work much better than our system, without rigging the economy in favor of the rich as Powell and many other wealthy people want. There certainly hasn't been wide support for Communism, especially the extreme versions by the USSR and China, although Cuba may have done some things well, and we should consider the good aspects while being careful to reject the bad, like any other ideology. His claim for some people supporting fascism is the most ironic of all, since fascism is often defined as a government controlled with close ties to corporations through force, ensuring the wealthy have power, often using racism to divide and rule, which is similar to the government he seemed to seek out; and during the twenties and thirties, many wealthy elites, from the same class as Lewis Powell were supportive of the fascists governments of Italy and Germany, especially Mussolini, but some like Henry Ford, Prescott Bush, the law firm where the Dulles brothers worked also supported Hitler, thinking that he would be much better than the Communist forces in the USSR, and even after the war they often supported fascists, especially in South America, many that they still supported when Powell wrote his memo. It was never the Democratic reformers trying to reduce pollution, income inequality, wars based on lies, and other efforts to rig the economy for the rich that supported fascism, it was allies of Powell, who embraced his memo.

He goes on to discuss how business interests should move to control education and the media to stop the majority from being able to get their views across, and suppress education. And there's an enormous amount of evidence to show they've been following through on that ever since, sometimes with Powell's assistance, but after he retired, there were many more that continued the efforts to centralize power in control of the wealthy business interests, which was his goal, and the goal of many other wealthy people, all along. A couple of the things that he helped accomplish as a Supreme Court Justice involved reducing access to quality education for poor people, and supporting the use of corporal punishment, even when it's so severe that it causes serious medical problems that would be a major crime under any other circumstances. Both of these rulings promoted policies that were major contributing causes of violence, other crimes, and many other social problems as well. The evidence to prove this was available before his rulings, if he wanted to consider it, and much more came after it, showing how outrageous they were.

In "Spare the Child" 1991 Philip Greven explains how a child in Florida was given severe corporal punishment so bad that he was hospitalized for not leaving the stage fast enough when a teacher told him to. A three judge panel in Florida looked closely at the situation and found the abuse was so extreme that it constituted obvious cruel and unusual punishment. This was appealed to the full court who didn't look as closely and overturned it, then again to the Supreme Court, who also didn't look as closely, or at least the majority didn't, with their opinion written by Lewis Powell. Thurgood Marshall was justifiably outraged, and did look at the severe punishment and the fact that the boy was hospitalized, yet Lewis Powell simply ignored this evidence without mentioning it in his opinion. This enabled bigger and more powerful people the legal right to abuse and torture children; and this was widely used against the poor, especially minorities, to control them, not look out for their best interests. Fortunately people across the country were outraged by this ruling, and most states banned corporal punishment within fifteen or so years and for the past ten years there have been only nineteen states still allow corporal punishment in school. Intentionally or not, this enabled another research opportunity, and the states banning corporal punishment in schools, and presumably using it less at home as well, always had lower murder rates than those still allowing it in schools, and using it more at home, with the gap growing steadily since they banned it, breaking a record in 2019 when those allowing it in schools had murder rates of 6.07 per 100,000, and those banning it having a rate of only 4.22. The states allowing it also have many other social problems, yet the media doesn't report on this and an opportunity to reduce child abuse and corporal punishment even more isn't taken, partly because many powerful people are more concerned with controlling the poor than solving social problems.

They do the same thing when it comes to depriving poor people of adequate education as Jonathan Kozol explains in several of his books including "Savage inequalities" 1991, where among other things he explains how Lewis Powell also wrote the opinion in San Antonio v. Rodriguez, which essentially says that poor people aren't entitled to a decent education, and almost reverses Brown v. Education, which we're constantly hearing about. They did this despite an enormous amount of evidence, a lot available at the time, and much more that was based on research that came later, showing that money spent on education saves far more than social problems that come later, due to inadequate education. This includes evidence showing that lack of education is a major factor for economic opportunities, crime, including violent crime, and high murder rates, and much more. And there's little doubt that, once again, a large majority of the public supports access to education, whether they understand the full implications or not. This is true despite the fact that the media doesn't inform the majority of the public about the best research showing the advantages of educational opportunities. In most cases, the political establishment doesn't come right out and admit they want to suppress education, but even if they claim they want to improve it, which they often do, they demonstrate with their actions this isn't true and occasionally someone gets caught telling the truth like the following excerpt shows:

Later in 1970, Roger Freeman--a key educational adviser to Nixon then working for the reelection of California Governor Ronald Reagan--spelled out quite precisely what the conservative counterattack was aimed at preventing: "We are in danger of producing and educated proletariat. That's dynamite! We have to be selective on who we allow to go through higher education. If not we will have a large number of highly trained and unemployed people." 30 The two most menacing institutional sources of the danger described by Freeman were obviously those two great public university systems charging no tuition: the University of California and the City University of New York. Governor Reagan was able to wipe out free tuition at the University of California. ("Vietnam and Other American Fantasies" Page 126 Howard Bruce Franklin 2000)

But once again, the fiscal ideology of the wealthy overrules both the recommendations of the best researchers and policies supported by a large majority of the public.

As I pointed out in a couple recent articles "Controlling the Dangerous Classes" by Randall Sheldon 2018 points out:

Perhaps nowhere is this better illustrated on a daily basis--sometimes for all to see--than in our system of justice. Because those who create laws and those who interpret laws are drawn largely from the wealthiest class, it comes as no surprise that those brought into the criminal justice system will be those drawn largely from the lowest social classes. On any given day, in courtrooms all over the country, we have essentially one class passing judgment on another class. Our system is fundamentally a system influenced by class (and race). p.19

Even though Sheldon focuses primarily on the justice system, showing that laws are often overwhelmingly made to favor the wealthy at the expense of the poor, it also applies to most if not all powerful institutions, including decisions about enabling the poor or middle class to get a good education, or whether policies based on good research are implemented on a large scale, or only small programs at the local level. Sheldon also points out that wealthy people had a large influence on controlling education, although some other researchers like Jonathan Kozol or Diane Ravitch put more emphasis on education and come to similar conclusions, often with much more evidence.

There must be literally thousands, if not millions, of research projects, some where they control the situation, at least to some degree, and often sacrifice, or partially sacrifice innocent animals or people, and other where they study people or animals in natural life where decisions are made for reasons other than research, but the research is done anyway. In many cases, they never get the informed consent of the research subject, and with animals or small children, they couldn't even if they wanted to, although, according to ethical guidelines, with people they're supposed to get informed consent, and if they research with children, the parents are supposed to give informed consent, yet this often doesn't happen. There are supposed to be ethical guidelines for both animal and human research, presumably with stricter guidelines for humans, but in both cases, those guidelines are often not followed and the vast majority of the public is unaware of most of what they do. Furthermore, the researchers, and institutions that support the research have primary control of the research, and how this research is used. When it comes to final decisions on policy the media is responsible for reporting on it, and the political establishment is responsible to make policies and fund programs, hopefully based on good research for the benefit of the majority of the public.

A couple examples, which could be used to make a few fundamental points, which many researchers must be aware of, although the basics of research are almost never explained to a large percentage of the public, are the experiment mentioned above involving rhesus monkeys, reported in Lisbeth Schorr's book and an example from Harriet Washington's book "A Terrible Thing To Waste" about an experiment in Baltimore, that violates any rational ethics guidelines, where the Kennedy-Krieger Institute encouraged landlords to seek low income tenents with children to rent houses contaminated with lead so they could study whether they could cut corners on housing across the country for lead abatement purposes.

Experiments on animals are often supposedly held accountable by Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee although few people from the establishment claim they have any rights. In the case rhesus monkeys, they clearly must have known that separating babies from their mothers at a crucial moment would cause problems for the monkey, but presumably they believed the benefit from the research would be much greater than the damage to the monkeys; but even if they're right, the monkeys are used without consent and the innocent are being sacrificed so the researchers could partially control the benefits, although without institutional help from the media and political establishment, even if the researchers wanted to take full advantage of the benefits, they couldn't, and they still don't have that support.

This is just one of many interlocking research projects coming to similar conclusions, including research by Jane Goodall showing similar problems with Chimpanzees in the wild, where children of dysfunctional mother chimpanzees became dysfunctional as adults, passing social problems from one generation to the next; and other research shows the same happens to people, regardless of race, in many ways. However, due to no fault of their own, African Americans have had their lives disrupted much worse than most white people because they were kidnapped and forced into slavery hundreds of years ago, disrupting their culture and ability to teach their children to function properly. To blame African Americans for this would be as irrational as blaming the rhesus monkeys that were separated from their mothers, when the damage was done intentionally by the researcher. Not that I'm equating African Americans with monkeys, since I have no doubt that if the lives of white people were disrupted in the same manner they would have the same problems, and there's research to show this, although I can't point out all of it here. Lisbeth Schorr does point out some of this evidence in the following excerpt:

The contrast begins, of course, with the circumstances of arrival. Blacks came not eagerly, but in chains. They were kept outside the mainstream of American opportunity until long after "emancipation," their exclusion readily maintained by highly visible, indelible color. Unlike other newcomers they could not settle close to family and friends from the "old country" to maintain ties, traditions, and mutual support but lived where the master dictated. For other ethnic groups, language, religion, and cuisine were rallying points and small business opportunities. "But the ethnic identity of black America was the target of cultural genocide."

Destroyed were the strong family traditions of preslavery West Africa, which had emphasized responsibility for even distant kin and had given children a powerful sense of belonging. In America, the white master had total control of food, clothing, shelter, religion, companionship, sex, and work; children were reared for the use of the master, not for the pride of parents or to carry on family traditions.

Education of slaves was seen by whites as a threat to their absolute control, and by 1835 every Southern state had enacted laws which forbade slaves to teach one another and "made the instruction of slaves in reading and writing by whites an indictable offense." Sociologist Sara Lawrence Lightfoot believes that from the days of slavery, in part because of the repressive laws, blacks attached an almost redemptive, otherworldly quality to education. As black churches and fraternal organizations began to gain in strength in the North, one of their most important functions became the establishment of free schools. But faith in education turned out not to be enough.

When slavery was at last officially abolished, blacks, concentrated in the South, could not readily avail themselves of the expanding industrial opportunities in the North. Blacks were also largely shut out of the labor movement in the early 1900s, and even the skilled trades learned in slavery were lost. In the 1940s, when blacks in large numbers began to migrate northward, the demand for unskilled labor had shrunk. By the time racist obstacles to employment had receded in the 1960s, so had the ample opportunities of the last stage of the industrial revolution. Blacks were hurt more than others by deindustrialization because of their heavy concentration in the auto, rubber, and steel industries. Many black men who had succeeded as agricultural laborers in the South, or briefly as unskilled factory workers in the North, could no longer earn a living wage. As social analyst Michael Harrington put it, just as poor blacks "arrived in the urban labor market ready to climb up the ladder of social mobility, the bottom rungs were being hacked off the ladder." p.249-50

Schorr only devotes a fraction of her book showing how slavery and control from white people contributed to the problems facing African Americans, but other good researchers provide much more evidence showing how it was a result of outside influences, not hereditary, as many ideologues try to claim, including Stacy Patton, author of "Spare the Kids," which also includes a good advise column free online column title "Ask Mother Wit," the biographies of Frederick Douglass, which are available free online, and All God's Children Fox Butterfield 1995, which also traces violence back to before the Civil War showing how it was passed down from one generation to the next, when there's no intervention. Fox Butterfield followed this up by tracing violence through several generations in a white family as well in "In My Father's House: A New View of How Crime Runs in the Family" 2018, which I haven't read yet, but it's one of many examples showing that child rearing tactics are far more important than hereditary factors, regardless of race; therefore, the intervention programs described by Lisbeth Schorr and other academics will produce large savings for many generations in the future. This isn't measured in all the studies showing that far more is saved in the long run than they spend on these programs, which means the real savings may be much higher than the studies show, which Lisbeth Schorr pointed out in her book.

Of course, ethical guidelines are supposed to be stricter for human research subjects, but in practice this is far from the case, as researchers like Harriet Washington show repeatedly. They're supposed to be supervised by Institutional Review Boards and officially the fundamental principles are described in several articles available to the public, who seek it out including Frequently Asked Questions About Institutional Review Boards which explains there are at least five members in each IRB, including at least one scientist, and one person from the community, that's supposedly not affiliated with the research institution. Whether this happens in practice is, of course, another story as Harriet Washington and other researchers point out including the case in Baltimore when the Kennedy-Krieger Institute encouraged landlords to seek out tenants with children knowing they would be at risk of lead poisoning and lied to them to get consent, which obviously wasn't informed; I mentioned this in two previous articles Oligarchs Have A Right To Profit From negligent Mass Murder; While Peaceful Protesters Are Arrested! and Is CNN An "Advocate For Truth?" Or Profits?; and excerpts from Washington's book on this subject are available at A Terrible Thing To Waste 2019 p.62-7. The Kennedy-Krieger Institute is officially a non-profit organization that is supposed to help children; it's certainly not supposed to be a front for wealthy landlords across the country, who would have been the beneficiaries of this research if it had succeeded in finding a less expensive way to reduce costs for lead removal.

Neither Washington or any of the articles I found show that there was any connection to slum lords that might be the beneficiary of this research, and they don't even speculate about the motive for this research, which is obviously outrageous; however, the biggest donor to the KKI, Zanvyl Krieger, apparently did have significant investments in real estate, although it's unclear if there was a large volume of lead paint in it, and his biggest investments don't involve real estate. I'm not sure this is adequate to provide the motive for this research, but if it's not and there are no other ties to slum lords that would benefit, it's hard to imagine why they would have conducted such an outrageous experiment. However, for one reason or another they did, and as I mentioned before Harriet Washington claims that Ericka Grimes was able to reach a settlement after a judge initially ruled in favor of the KKI, but an appeals court overturned this, but the amount wasn't disclosed in her book, and these settlements are often accompanied by non-disclosure agreements. Washington also said there were other lawsuits pending and a couple of them may have been settled shortly after her book went to press as reported in Court orders Kennedy Krieger to pay woman harmed in 1990s-era lead paint study $1.84 million 11/14/2019 there are numerous additional cases, including one that was settled without disclosing the details, presumably involving non-disclosure agreements, and another award for $1.84 million which may sound good, but there's "a cap on non-economic damages will reduce that to $521,000," and the KKI has said that it will appeal, so it's unclear whether they'll get anything, or if they settle they might get much less, and/or have to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

This has received virtually no attention in traditional media; if I hadn't read Harriet Washington's books, which aren't widely advertised, I never would have known about it. This is just one of many cases that she has studied in her books, which also include "Medical Apartheid" and "Deadly Monopolies," which cite many more examples, and many other environmentalists report on research into environmental damage, including Robert Bullard, although, in most cases the environmental damage isn't done for research purposes, but because of greed, but the results are the same; rich people profit and poor people, who often get sick or die, are used for research and don't give consent, or rarely receive any compensation, and if the rich are taken to court, it's civil court, not criminal court. One shocking experiment that was done by Gregory D. Kutz who wrote "Human Subjects Research: Undercover Tests Show the Institutional Review Board System Is Vulnerable to Unethical Manipulation," where he describes how he worked at the request of the General Accountability Office (GAO) to check if IRBs are subject to abuse. He created a fictitious IRB and submitted applications to both the HHS and three private IRBs that they thought required minimal paperwork. The HHS accepted them and listed them as a legitimate IRB, the second and third IRBs they applied with asked some questions, without close contact, before rejecting their proposal, with one of them saying it was the worst proposal they had ever seen, and that it was rejected unanimously; however, the first IRB not only accepted their proposal unanimously, but thinking they were a legitimate IRB, they asked them to approve their own proposal, which they could have, but they knew they didn't have the expertise, and, of course, they weren't trying to actually approve unsafe proposals, just to find out if it could be done, which apparently it could. His testimony also seems to indicate that private researchers can shop around for an IRB until they find a good one, although many large institutions may not be inclined to do this; however, when it comes to risky research, I can't rule out the possibility they might arrange for a subsidiary to do the research, to minimize liability. Most of Kutz's testimony is listed below, or you can read the whole thing in the Google link just above.

A couple additional researchers into using people for research include The Censor's Hand: The Misregulation of Human-Subject Research (Basic Bioethics) 1st Edition by Carl E. Schneider and Behind Closed Doors: IRBs and the Making of Ethical Research (Morality and Society Series) by Laura Stark. I've only read a few excerpts from both these books, but it appears that, at least to some degree, that "The Censor's Hand" may be arguing that the protections for research subjects might be too stringent, and that research that could save many lives are not being done because of this, so discretion is advised. I'm not positive this is the case, but if it is, then essentially he may be arguing that more research subjects should be sacrificed to develop scientific advances that could save a larger number of people. One of his claims is that the subjects don't necessarily need protections from IRBs is because they have the ability to sue, creating a liability; which is technically true, but in practice, if Schneider wanted to know, he would realize that the vast majority of research subjects are poor without the money to sue, while unethical researchers often have access to massive amount of funds for legal defense, and Harriet Washington often points out. Furthermore both Washington and Kutz have demonstrated that IRBs aren't nearly as powerful as Schneider claims. I'm not ruling out the possibility that Schneider is a propaganda front for corporations trying to weaken liability or regulation, not to protect research subjects. However, if this argument is to be considered seriously, it's important to share the benefits of research with everyone, which isn't the case right now. A few excerpts for Schneider's book are listed below, or you can go to Amazon and read a couple dozen free pages for free.

The vast majority of research is controlled by wealthy people and they share the benefits with the majority of the public when, and only when, it suits their purposes; and they're typically more concerned with increased profits than the best interests of the majority. And once you look into researchers of the CIA there are dozens more good books in various types of research on people without consent or abiding by ethical guidelines, including mind control research like MKULTRA, massive amounts of research on radiation poisoning from nuclear bombs and other war time researchers, often almost as bad as the research done by the Nazi's which get much more attention. For every scandal you hear about in traditional media, like Jon Stewart's work on burn pits, or Camp Lejeune, that are finally being reluctantly settled, there may be many more that are being stalled or rejected, even when there's obvious liability. Even in cases like Camp Lejeune, where they admitted liability, a massive amount of the settlement is going to lawyers, which is routine, and advertising, which only happens in rare cases. This is especially true when the victims are in third world countries, like those poisoned by chemical weapons or Agent Orange in South East Asia. In most cases the worst research projects were decades ago, but some of it may have moved to third world countries, and prisoners, or veterans which have always been targeted for research continue being used, even the veterans are often not allowed to give informed consent.

If you look at some sources writing about Institutional Review Boards you might come across people that say they've been heavily debated for years if not decades.

Really?

Where is this debate and have the vast majority of the public been involved in it, or even informed of it?

The truth is they almost certainly have been debated extensively for years if not decades, but the vast majority of the public hasn't been involved, or even informed of this debate. The debate is mostly in the academic world, involving educated and reasonably wealthy people, and many of them often have doubts, but the majority of people never hear about these doubts, and those in the academic world with the most doubts are probably left out of the decision making process. Those making the decisions are almost all reasonably well off and educated, while those being used for research are almost always less educated, poorer, minorities, and increasingly from third world countries. The poor make all the sacrifices, and the rich control or get all the benefits.

The result is that even after Lisbeth Schorr's book has been out for almost thirty-five years the vast majority of the public isn't aware that we have good research showing how to solve many social problems, and there's much more research that has been done since then, which most people aren't aware of. So instead of making important decisions based on the best research showing how to solve many problems, and save money for the majority of the public at the same time, political decisions are based on the fiscal ideology of the wealthy; and only the politicians catering to their interests can get media coverage enabling them to get name recognition needed to get elected, so instead of serving the interests of voters they serve the interests, of campaign donors.

On pages 136 and 294 Schorr cites polls where large majorities of the public said they should support universal health care, and increased spending on health care and education for the poor, even if it meant paying higher taxes, at a time when they were unaware of the research showing that in the long term these would actually save much more money than they cost. If they were aware of the potential savings there's little doubt that the majorities of the public supporting spending on education, health care, and other programs that save far more than they cost would be much higher and we would have much fewer social problems, which most European countries had already done back in the eighties.

"The most up to date research confirms what every parent and grandparent knows--young children need, at home and elsewhere, competent, warm, responsive adults who are not so overwhelmed that they can't be joyfully involved with them. But in the United States we have not yet succeeded in translating this understanding into workable child care policies." p.211 Shortly after she wrote this she expressed optimism that many of these programs would greatly increase, and help solve many social problems, which may have happened on a small scale at the local level in some parts of the country, but for the most part the opposite happened.

Reagan did a lot to cut funding for education, which was the opposite of what was needed and what the majority of the public wanted; then when George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton took office they dramatically escalated the privatization of education, which also did far more harm than good. During the first Bush administration there was a dramatic increase in advertising in school, which was previously banned, because they recognized this would be a form of indoctrination before children developed critical thinking skills to see how deceptive advertising routinely is. This was studies by Susan Linn, author of "Consuming Kids," and Juliet Schor, author of "Born to Buy," both exposing how damaging this advertising is to children. One of the most outrageous advertising program in schools was Channel One which both Schor and Linn researched, but Roy Fox went into more depth in his book "Harvesting Minds," showing how this was part of an indoctrination program. Fortunately, despite the establishments efforts to promote advertising in schools, parents and teachers learned at the grassroots level how damaging it was, with no help from mainstream media, and at least Channel One shut down about four years ago, but there's still way too much other advertising in schools doing far more damage than good, and while mainstream media has a major advantage promoting corporate control of education, the grassroots struggle at the local levels to expose efforts to privatize education, including advertising or charter schools, which were initially an effort to develop improved programs for at risk children, as Lisbeth Schorr explained.

Shortly after Schorr wrote her book they also increased the shift to Charter Schools, including for profit Charter Schools, which shifted control of education to the private sector controlled by billionaires and economists, without concern for the best interests of children or most of this research. Schorr cited one school in East Harlem where they allowed parents to chose their own school, which started out with at risk children, and helped turn them around; she claimed they managed to attract more at risk children who they were able to help. However, as Diane Ravitch explained in several of her books, when the practice of school choice increased to a much larger scale this isn't what happened; instead the children with the least problems managed to get into the best schools, abandoning those with the most problems. The result turned out to be the opposite of what the early experiments were supposed to do.

When you compare the United States to other wealthy countries we have more social problems than most, or in many cases, all other wealthy countries, including the highest murder rates, highest rates of mass shootings, highest teen pregnancy rates, or infant mortality rates, only six out of twenty one countries have more teenage abortions than the United States, two more are tied, with twelve countries having lower rates, highest inequality rates, highest rates for drug addiction, and the lowest life expectancy rates. The only major factor where we aren't doing worse than all, or almost all other wealthy countries, is homeless rates, where we're still doing worse than most other wealthy countries, but a few that are doing worse than us, including Sweden, France and the UK, are doing much worse, so I would conclude that we're doing above average for this category; however, that's not much to brag about. As I pointed out in previous articles, studies within the United States, and more importantly in Finland, found that we could save more money than it costs by housing the homeless than we could by ignoring the problem, since large rates of homeless people cause many other social problems which cost the government more than it would to house them.

Previously in Burying violence prevention education, including Crumbly shooting, is routine! I explained how Finland implemented a housing first program, and Portugal implemented a drug treatment program that involved decriminalizing drugs, and both of them saved far more money than they cost and greatly reduced both problems. Finland found they saved about $15,000 (Euros are almost equal to dollars right now) for each homeless person; however, this underestimated the savings, since the homeless rates have been plummeting in Finland since they began this program so they have far fewer homeless people to care for than they used to which will make the savings much higher. Portugal had similar savings with drug addiction, although they haven't measured it quite as well in financial terms.

Whether it's Lizbeth Schoor's work, other sources, I've cited here, or many more that I haven't cited but are available in libraries or alternative media, but not mainstream commercial media, we have much better solutions to most if not all social problems than the mainstream media reports on or politicians base their decisions on. Schorr reports "The New York superintendent of schools, Anthony Alvarado, testified to the Senate Children's Caucus that schools have to start their dropout prevention efforts much earlier. 'It's strange,' he said. 'We know what to do, we just don't do it.'" p.xxvii There's little or no doubt that he's right, and if we had implemented the recommendations of good academics, instead of serving the interests of campaign donors, there's no doubt that we could have done a much better job solving many social problems, including poverty, teenage parenthood, or abortions, homelessness, drug addiction, and violence, possibly reducing our rates as low or even lower than countries in Europe that have been implementing these solutions much better than us for decades.

Instead of covering the best researchers, like Lisbeth Schorr, James Garbarino, Stacey Patton, Jonathan Kozol, Dorothy Otnow Lewis, and many more that get little or no attention from mainstream media, they provide an enormous amount of obsession media coverage of people calling for massive spending cuts for social programs that save far more than they cost, then when social problems get worse they demand we spare no expense on police, prisons and courts that aren't nearly as effective, and costs much more. We're supposed to believe many of these politicians are fiscal conservatives, even though they spend money on things that don't work and cut funds for things that do work. Instead of providing media coverage for these good academics they give shows to quacks like Dr. Oz, Dr. Drew, and Dr. Phil, all who made massive fortunes off their fame, but they're constantly being caught at one scam or another and they don't discuss any of the most effective ways to solve social problems.

The mainstream media covers plenty of so-called "victims rights advocates," like Nancy Grace, Jane Velez Mitchell, John Walsh, and many more who routinely scream about increased punishment without discussing the most effective ways to reduce violence before it escalates, giving many people the impression that punishment as a deterrent is the only solution being considered, even though focusing solely on this has been a dismal failure. It seems to me that the most important right for victims should be to be safe from crime in the first place, so they never become victims; if that's the case researchers like Lisbeth Schorr and James Garbarino are far more effective as victims rights advocates, even though they never refer to themselves that way. The media has provided an enormous amount of coverage for authoritarian ways of solving problems, even though they don't work like strict disciplinarian movies that seem to solve problems like Dangerous Minds, Stand and Deliver and Lean on Me which all use version of what they often call "tough love," instead of the solutions described by good researchers like Schorr and Garbarino. Jonathan Kozol pointed out that while a few of the students from East Side High might have improved a little bit, the vast majority of the people thrown out of school received no help and wound up in jail and Joe Clark's methods did far more harm than good, which could have been prevented by effective programs or increased funding to education, instead of a bullhorn and a baseball bat. Even Joe Clark's Wikipedia page admits his methods did more harm than good, yet the media portrayed these failed programs as successful.

They did the same thing with Scared Straight or Boot Camp Rehabilitation programs for troubled teens; but when the best research showed these did far more damage than good the media declined to cover that, although they don't promote these programs as much as they used to, at least not on the national level; but in some places they're still being used. When Scared Straight was exposed as a fraud in the academic world the media never covered it, but sources like James Garbarino have been critical of it and Scared Straight: Don’t Believe the Hype claims that "Scared Straight style programs typically cost less than $100 per child. Yet, research by the Washington State Institute on Public Policy found that for every $80 spent on such programs, taxpayers and crime victims pay an additional $14,000 associated with youths’ recurring contact with the juvenile and criminal justice systems. On the plus side, family/community-connected delinquency prevention strategies have been show to save the public between $5,000 and $78,000 per youth and avoid costs for court services, policing and care of victims.5"

Our high crime problems or other social problems aren't incomprehensive, as the media often implies; and to a large degree they're intentional, even if ideologues act with shock if anyone suggests such a thing.

If they don't understand the most effective ways to reduce crime or many other social problems it's because they don't want to. There may be a lot of ideological fanatics that believe their own irrational claims about getting tough on crime or false claims about being fiscal conservatives but there are also many people that understand they're ignoring the best research and go along with it anyway. It may be hard to tell which is which but this means that many people are implementing policies even though they do far more harm than good, and in many cases it's because they're incredibly greedy or power hungry. The richest people in this country with the most political power already have far more money than they could ever spend, or that would improve their quality of life, so they could contribute to solutions without reducing their quality of life, yet they choose not to.

A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Radioactive Oatmeal Go Down 03/08/2017

Stacey Patton traced the history of corporal punishment among African Americans back to the slave years, and showed this practice was actually forced on them by slave owners who taught them to abuse each other, in "Spare The Kids."

After several generations of this many African Americans forgot this history and mistakenly thought it was a tradition taught by their ancestors. Some African Americans objected when white people discouraged it, without realizing they should have been objecting far more about the slave owners that escalated this tradition to unreasonable levels.

The following are additional sources or related research, including excerpts mentioned above from Gregory Kutz, Carl E. Schneider, and Dr. Edward Ziglar:

Britain is worst in Europe for teenage pregnancy rates 07/01/2002

Adolescent Pregnancy and Its Outcomes Across Countries August 2015

Wikipedia: List of countries by intentional homicide rate

Wikipedia: List of countries by life expectancy

Wikipedia: List of countries by income equality

Wikipedia: List of countries by infant and under-five mortality rates

Wikipedia: List of countries by secondary education attainment

Wikipedia: List of countries by prevalence of opiates use

U.S. Has High Levels of Illegal Drug Use 01/13/2021

Wikipedia: List of countries by homeless population

Wikipedia: Prevalence of teenage pregnancy

SENATORS SEEK ANSWERS AT FORUM ON HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUT PROBLEM 01/24/1984 ''It's strange,'' he said, ''we know what to do, we just don't do it.'

The Texas Miracle 08/23/2004 All in all, 463 kids left Sharpstown High School that year – for a variety of reasons. The school reported zero dropouts, but dozens of the students did just that. School officials hid that fact by classifying, or coding them as leaving for acceptable reasons: transferring to another school, or returning to their native country. "That's how you get to zero dropouts. By assigning codes that say, 'Well, this student, you know, went to another school. He did this or that.' And basically, all 463 students disappeared. And the school reported zero dropouts for the year," says Kimball. "They were not counted as dropouts, so the school had an outstanding record."

Mississippi Used Welfare Money To Pay Brett Favre 09/03/2022

Lisbeth B Schorr Welcome to my Website

Piecing together the real woman behind Reagan’s ‘welfare queen’ 05/31/2019

THE MYTH THAT NOTHING WORKS 07/17/1988

Ending Child Poverty in America: An Impossible Dream? 06/21/2022 Lisbeth B. Schorr

Lisbeth B. Schorr C-Span

Behind Closed Doors: IRBs and the Making of Ethical Research (Morality and Society Series) by Laura Stark

Whistleblowers at U.S. funded research institutions fear retaliation 09/25/2017

Wikipedia: Baltimore Lead Paint Study

Philanthropist pledges $50 million to Hopkins Zanvyl Krieger favors medicine and baseball 12/21/1992 Shows some investment in real estate, although it's unclear if it's slums with high amounts of lead.

Who is Zanvyl Krieger? Also shows investment in real estate.

Research on At-Risk Children and Youth

An Office of the Administration for Children & Families

Gregory D. Kutz who wrote "Human Subjects Research: Undercover Tests Show the Institutional Review Board System Is Vulnerable to Unethical Manipulation," The following is a government report in the public domain, even if they presented it in a manner that is hard to cut and paste, without typing it up.

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Human Subjects Research: Undercover Tests Show the Institutional Review Board System Is Vulnerable to Unethical Manipulation 03/26/2009

The following are a few excerpts from The Censor's Hand: The Misregulation of Human-Subject Research (Basic Bioethics) 1st Edition by Carl E. Schneider, as I said above, I'm skeptical of his work, but you can also go to Amazon's free excerpts and read more before coming to your own conclusions.

The following are screenshots of the forward for "Handbook of Early Childhood Intervention," by Dr. Edward Ziglar, which mentions two more studies saying that preventive programs save at least four to seven dollars for every dollar spent on them: