Administration of Children's Services admits "experiments" on children
By José Acosta, El Diario / La Prensa, 31 December 2004. Translated from Spanish by Chris Brandt.

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Carrying placards saying "ACS STOP DRUGGING OUR CHILDREN," activists from the December 12th Movement organization and members of the African-American community carried out a protest demonstration yesterday across from the Incarnation Children's Center in Washington Heights. They accused the Center of "allowing HIV-positive minors under its care to be used for medical experiments."

Mowale Clay of the December 12th Movement said yesterday that the purpose of the demonstration was to protect Latino and African-American children under the care of the New York City Administration of Children's Services, ACS, who are "forced to submit to experiments with anti-HIV medications which are lethal and toxic."

"These children have no one to defend them," said Clay, pointing out that these experiments with new drugs against HIV/AIDS are also "a violation of these children's civil rights, and are racist too, because the majority of the children in the tests are Latino and Black."

Gerald McKelvey, spokesman for the Incarnation Children's Center (ICC), an ACS agency operated by the Catholic Church, said in a communiqué yesterday that his institution was only one of the more than 25 adoption agencies in New York City which took part in the "experiments."

"From 1993 to the beginning of 2002, approximately 60 children from Incarnation Children's Center were subjects of a series of clinical trials on a national level, with the support of the National Institute of Health, to test the efficacy of medications to alleviate the suffering and significantly prolong the lives of children infected with HIV," said McKelvey, and pointed out that the test conducted at ICC was under the supervision of Columbia University.

"Throughout the country, thousands of children with HIV took part in the tests," explained the spokesperson for ICC.

McKelvey's communiqué continued by saying that the tests at ICC "were successful. In the past, children infected with HIV in ICC would die; these kids lived and are now teenagers. According to Columbia, none of the ICC children died as a result of the tests; while some experienced reactions to the combination of medications used in the tests, none suffered prolonged secondary effects," assured McKelvey.

The accusations and belated protests stemmed, in part, from a documentary aired by the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation)on December 12th, called "Guinea Pig Kids," which exposed "a racist and monstrous relationship among ACS, the Catholic Archdiocese of New York, and GlaxoSmithKline, a manufacturer of drugs that were combined. For several years they used experimental medicines, some of them lethal, on Black and Latino minors infected with HIV."

Translation © 2004, IPA, all rights reserved. Included by permisson of El Diario / La Prensa.

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