Two by Sharyl Attkisson. "These people have no moral compunction to suffocate a premature baby. And they wonder why we bitterly cling to our guns and bibles."
Sharyl Attkisson on Journalism’s Very Dangerous Trend
Full Disclosure: Did Government’s Experiment on Preemies Hide Risks?
“The most troubling part is that numerous high-ranking officials facilitated this interference by senior NIH officials,” Carome said, “despite the fact that NIH had obvious actual, direct conflicts of interest in the research under investigation.”
As someone near and dear to me commented: "These people have no moral compunction to suffocate a premature baby. And they wonder why we bitterly cling to our guns and bibles."
9 comments:
We are living under a tyrannical government and leadership that has no moral or ethical code. NO honor, and display dogmatic and narcissistic personality's. There is no leadership quality that I can condone.
Bible is clear in 1 Timothy 6
If anyone teaches otherwise and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, 4 they are conceited and understand nothing. They have an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions 5 and constant friction between people of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain.
I sure hope Attkisson has somebody watching her six. No, not her 'actual' six, (which I'm sure is one fine 'six'), but her defensive six where a liberal would love to add a knife, sticking out of her shirt.
This may not be as bad as it sounds. Much of what I'm seeing is that no baby was oxygen-deprived, but that infants were given varying levels of oxygen already within the medically accepted range for preemies, and were evaluated to see what levels actually worked best. If that's what happpened, it really isn't a problem, any more than would be giving people with colds different levels of antivirals to see what worked best. What might be a problem is the wording of the consent form (and how the study was explained to parents who might have thought their child was going to receive some special, additional care). Possibly I'm just missing it, but I haven't found a copy of the consent form used.
Bear, the problem with that is, normally you adjust the O2 level in accordance with how the baby is doing. In the study, you fix it at a randomly determined level and leave it there to see what happens.
What happened was entirely predictable, even by somebody like me who never attended medical school: At the lower O2 levels in the study, death rates were elevated. At the higher O2 levels, blindness and vision problems increased.
Like i've written before on this site, it makes no difference if they wear a skull or a red star on their lapel, so whether they're neo-cons or Obami-commies they are a death cult. Paid for by the trillions in the coffers of the leaders of the cult, the elitists. They want to decide who lives and who dies; who's human and who isn't...And it's nice to see someone in the media speaking out about our nations news broadcasts being on the same line as "Tass" or "Pravda" but this discussion should have been going on decades ago. I'm 57 and have never seen a "non-spin" TV or newspaper story in my lifetime.
@FedUp, if you have a link to that data I'd like to see it. Please understand, I'm not doubting/arguing with you. I just don't know, and you've seen something I haven't yet.
I'm not medically trained (except for the usual field aid stuff, and some layman's knowledge), but my sister is a nurse and has explained some of the preemie ventilation procedures. But that was a few years ago, and the procedures may well have changed since then. Back then, "adjust the O2 level in accordance with how the baby is doing" seemed to be pretty much hit or miss because they simply didn't know what worked best. She said that that O2 levels -- within accepted limits -- seemed to be less important than the ventilation rate (recalling that I'm not a medical sort, I understood that to mean that they were cycling respiration -- in-breaths/outbreaths -- at a high rate to keep the baby's lungs expanded), and that fast "breathing rates" and the pressure used caused lung tissue damage from physical stress. She had a rather graphic verbal description of tiny babies basically vibrating from the force that I and she found disturbing.
So -- from what I have found on this study -- it looked like they weren't so much experimenting with O2 levels or respirartion rate as they were noting what was used and collating the data vs. survival to predict what did work best. That would seem to be a matter of doctors doing the best they could and comparing notes afterwards -- a simplification. But if they were screwing around with levels/rates just to see what would happen... that's evil in my book. Most of the lamestream muddia tech stuff I have found on this suggests the kinder version; but again, I don't have access to the full paper.
Bear: From what the Office for Human Research Protections concluded, infants in the study received either more or less oxygen than babies not in the study.
At least the oxygen was carefully monitored to a blood saturation percentage.
16% of the high o2 group died, vs 19% of the low o2 group. OTOH, the high o2 group had twice as much ROP (18% vs 9%, so even with the reduced oxygen level, 1 out of 11 had eye damage).
OHRP concluded that the consent form was deficient. I conclude that a lot of single mothers were targeted with the knowledge that they wouldn't read the consent form and would rely on oral statements from hospital workers, in many cases falsely saying that being in the study would help their babies.
Letter here:
http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/detrm_letrs/YR13/mar13a.pdf
Published study here (I haven't read it):
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa0911781
FedUp, thanks. I just downloaded the letter, and the paper page is bookmarked for reading once my desk is clear.
ADDED: Sorry about the long delay. Probably no one is going to come back and read this, but I just had time to review the links FedUp provided. After reading the methodology (http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa0911781):
What they did falls somewhere in between my posited notion that they merely observed what O2 levels did what, and the the fearful version that they deliberately deprived babies of minimally proper O2 levels. In fact, they divided the babies into two groups and gave one set the lower level in the generally accepted range and gave the other set the higher level in that range. I'm not exactly comfortable with that kind of experimentation on babies that can't properly consent; but that what parental consent is for.
This from the consent form: ""Infants randomized to the CPAP group may, at some point in their
care, require intubation and assisted ventilation (methods to help them breathe). If the
attending physician deems this necessary, participation in the study will not affect this
decision. Some unknown risks may be learned during the study. If these occur, you will
be informed by the study personnel." would seem reassuring to parents, but apparently nothing in the form explained the potential increased death risk at lower O2 saturation. That is inexcusable, if accurate.
What I definitely do find disturbing is the technique they used to ensure double-blind methodology (i.e.- making sure participants and observers avoid bias by not letting them know which group a baby was in): they manipulated the oximeters to give knowingly false readings; that is, the oximeters reported levels differing from what was administered. In an already-critical preemie, that seems reckless.
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