From: Ron Kean (ronkean@juno.com)
Date: Thu Jan 28 1999 - 09:17:28 MST
On Thu, 28 Jan 1999 04:13:03 -0500 Ian Goddard <Ian@Goddard.net> writes:
>At 01:38 AM 1/28/99 -0500, Ron Kean wrote:
>
>>But here is an excerpt from the new text that relpaced what was
>repealed:
>>
>>
>>
>>(c) Informed consent required
>>
>> The Secretary of Defense may conduct a test or experiment described
>in
>>subsection (b) of this section only if informed consent to the
>testing
>>was
>>obtained from each human subject in advance of the testing on that
>>subject.
>
>
> IAN: There's no question that that provision
> addresses exactly what 1520 obviously lacked,
> and I think your raising it also address the
> idea I was replying to that now only the
> 30-day-notification period is lifted.
>
> If you read 1520(a), subsection (c) is also
> well-embedded into it, and there is no way
> for the Secretary of Defence to get around
> it (that I can find so far). But, as for
> the President and the rest of the Govt,
> 1520(a) imposses no prohibitions.
>
> I'd rather see 1520(a) start for saying that
> "No agency or member of the U.S. Government,
> or contracting for same or any entity may..."
> Instead, only one official is restrained.
Wanting the entire government to be prohibited from doing such testing,
as opposed to just the Defense Dept. is a good idea. But the fact that
1520 does not do what you want is not necessarily a defect of 1520. I
suspect that the context of 1520 was that it addresses the Defense Dept.
only.
To put it another way, if there is a law which applies to those who hold
commercial drivers and says they must stop for pedestrians in crosswalks,
it may be unfair to say that is a bad law because it fails to say that
non-commercial license holders must also stop for pedestrians in
crosswalks. That may be addressed in a different section of the code.
The reason why laws are codified (rationally organized and indexed) is to
make it easy to research the legality of actions, and to draft and repeal
extisting legislation. When a law is passed by the Maryland legislature,
the statute itself is just editorial instructions dictating changes in
the Code.
I recall that several years ago there was a big flap about
government-supported scientists doing unethical testing on people in the
US, in years past. I think some of this legislation we are discussing
may have been in response to those scandals. Without doing a broad study
of all such legislation, its history and intent, and related policies and
practices, it's difficult to draw valid conclusions. As with any issue
involving human action, the motives and intents of the people involved
vary across a broad spectrum. There will always be some individual
police who are prone to mistreat suspects. The important thing is how
the law and legal system deals with those problems.
>
> I think Hal's point was even deeper than I'd
> grasped. I think he was saying that 1520 was
> not a de facto "legalization," it wasn't saying
> "this is now declared legal." It was more like
> stepping in the planning room of an on-going
> project, such that the only reason the law
> was written was to tell the DoD that they
> have to give a 30-day warning FROM NOW ON.
>
> In short, that testing is allowable wasn't
> the point of 1520, the 30-day notice was.
> Ergo, the mass testing is considered legal.
> That seems to me to be a possible reading.
>
>
When reading legal codes, it is important to consider the context. It
may be that even the 1977 legislation you were complaining about actually
increased restrictions on government actions, instead of authorizing
them. If you are looking for laws which authorize egregious government
actions, you should try looking at the emergency acts of 1917 which
authorize the president to do all sorts of things persuant to a
declaration of emergency, essentially dictatorial powers, and at the
McCarran act (ca. 1950) which endangers civil liberties, and at the
Rooseveltian legislation of 1933 to 1935.
Republican/libertarian Congressman Ron Paul of Texas would like to see
some of this bad legislation repealed. It is possible that if you
contact Ron Paul's office they could give you a 'hit list' of such laws.
Rep. Paul has recently introduced a bill to ban the use of social
security numbers for use outside the SS administration (and maybe the
IRS).
Ron Kean
.
.
.
___________________________________________________________________
You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail.
Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com/getjuno.html
or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:02:57 MST