Medical experimentation on children in foster care should stop - and a good start is to cut off federal funding for such experimentation

My upcoming book on child protective proceedings will feature constitutional problems arising when CPS remove children from their homes and their parents or biological families, with little, if any procedural protections, and the dangers that arise for the children's safety when CPS is given power over medical decisions regarding the children and practically of their lives.

Remember, parents and legal guardians are allowed to make decisions for their children to take or not to take medications with potentially deadly side effects, undergo or not undergo risky surgeries.

Also, parents and legal guardians have a right to decide whether and when to take the child off life support if the child is on it.

With the thriving organ donor industry, there are enough ethical problems in having parents sign consents to harvest organs from allegedly brain-dead children with beating hearts.

With the thriving pharmaceutical industry, there are enough ethical problems when parents enroll their children in clinical trials of potentially dangerous drugs.

Such ethical problems increase many-fold when CPS is the legal guardian of the children and makes the decisions as to enrollment of the children into medical experimentation, which is prohibited in the U.S. without consent of the human subjects.

For years in this country there have been reports of CPS using its position as a legal custodian of children in foster care to enroll them in risky drug experimentation, which the parents would have forbidden.

When a child is prescribed drugs with dangerous side effects, the parent, as the child's legal guardian, has the right to say "no", at least if the child's life is not depending on taking the drug and if there is proven scientific evidence that the drug will save the child's life or has a high potential to do that.

Subjecting children to prescription drugs which were never proven in their efficiency or safety for use in children is experimentation on children, and that is exactly what CPS and family courts are doing throughout this country, with the help of law enforcement.

What is the monetary gain if the child is prescribed such medications?

The gain is for:

1. the pharmaceutical companies producing the drugs, and that is why manufacturers of drugs fight tooth and claw to cater for prescribing physicians;
2. the prescribing physician - for obvious reasons that he or she gets to monitor the child;
3. for the CPS who will get extra money from the state and federal government for taking care of a child with a "diagnosed" disability, and will get extra money if CPS succeeds in pushing for adoption of the "disabled" child out of foster care - there are significant financial incentives for CPS to do that, as I have already written on this blog.

In 2015 there were several such stories reported.

In one of the episodes, about the Nikolayev family, the SWAT team descended to grab the baby from the family simply because the family was not satisfied with the quality of care the baby received in the local hospital, did not want to have their child undergo a heart surgery in the hospital where they were not sure about the standard of care, and wanted a second opinion.  So, CPS and police was used, on the tip from a hospital, to fight the potential plaintiffs in a medical malpractice action.

Since the parents were Russian nationals, the case caused an international uproar, involving Russian diplomats.

It has been reported as far back as 2005 by NBCNews that the government tested AIDS drugs on children in foster care, raising red flags as to legality of such testing and ethical issues involved in removal of children who are then subjected to medical experimentation without their parents' permission.

A higher death rate among foster children who were subjected to anti-HIV drug testing as compared to the similar control population of HIV-infected children was reported in that study.  

Some children's advocates compared drug-testing on foster care kids to Nazi experimentation in concentration camps.  Whether it is claimed to be "in the best interests of the child or not", where monetary incentives exist for the legal custodians of the children and all participants in such drug-testing, the comparison is not too far-fetched.

A federal legislation dubbed "Justina's Law" has been introduced, to prevent hospitals and CPS from conspiring to use children in foster care for medical research, even in cases where such participation presents great risks to children with no proven prospect of benefit to them.  The bill number is H.R. 4989. 

The bill, which is not enacted still, is aimed to 

"To prohibit Federal funding of any treatment or research in which a ward of the State is subjected to greater than minimal risk to the individual's health with no or minimal prospect of direct benefit."

So far, the CPS and medical industry's lobby apparently outweighed children's rights and the bill was not enacted, thus, federal funding (using taxpayers' money, your money, ladies and gentlemen) of medical experimentation on children, made by CPS in conspiracy with medical professionals, is not prohibited.

Call your representatives in the U.S. Legislature to have this overdue bill enacted.

Be also aware that your representatives, in 2014, derailed yet another bill that would have protected children from medical experimentation.

Call your representatives and give them your opinion on their actions as to not enacting that bill, push for enactment of legislative protection of children's right to be free from medical experimentation, and especially when they are in the custody of child protective services.