From: Ian Goddard (Ian@Goddard.net)
Date: Thu Jan 28 1999 - 11:32:26 MST
At 11:17 AM 1/28/99 -0500, Ron Kean wrote:
>> 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.
IAN: Talk about conducting experiments of harmful
chemical and biological warfare agents on "civilian
populations" is disconcerting to me and to us. With
respect to new law 1520(a), what civilian population
would consent to such? "Hay New Jersey, the DoD would
like to know if you'd consent to some Anthrax tests."
In short, if any document talks about mass poisoning,
and in the case of 1520, makes no mention of consent,
that is on its face evidence that something's wrong!
Consensual mass poisoning is improbable on its face,
so I doubt that context would explain away that law.
Also, having read a fair amount of Code, context is
usually indicted by references to other sections,
a fact that can make reading some Code a nightmare!
But no such references existed in 1520 (or 1520(a)),
which, in context, suggests it was standing alone.
But I looked around for more meaning of "consent"
in the U.S. Code and I found a section that seems
to provide protection (I have no idea when this
section was passed or if it's been repealed):
---------------------------------------------------------
See: http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/10/980.html
UNITED STATES CODE
TITLE 10 - ARMED FORCES
Subtitle A - General Military Law
PART II - PERSONNEL
CHAPTER 49 - MISCELLANEOUS PROHIBITIONS AND PENALTIES
S 980. Limitation on use of humans as experimental subjects
Funds appropriated to the Department of Defense may not be
used for research involving a human being as an experimental
subject unless -
(1) the informed consent of the subject is obtained in
advance; or
(2) in the case of research intended to be beneficial to
the subject, the informed consent of the subject or a legal
representative of the subject is obtained in advance.
------------------------- END CODE QUOTE ------------------------
But this clearly applies only to tests involving
just "a human being," and continually defines the
tested as singular. A "civilian population" is not
"a human being." Also, the above applies only to
funds appropriated to the DoD. But most important,
it defines "informed consent" as possibly only
informing "a legal representative of the subject,"
which takes us right back to 1520, which only
required that "civilian officials" be notified,
which may be why 1520 never referenced 10(980).
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