"Oppression in the extreme appears terrible: but oppression on more refined appearances remains oppression; and where the smallest degree of it is cherished it grows stronger and more extensive."

From ‘A plea for the poor’ John Woolman (Quaker) 1720-1772

Medical Whistleblower was founded by Dr. Janet Parker, a Veterinarian who reported Fraud, Abuse and Neglect in the Medical Community.   The organization is dedicated to advocacy and the emotional support of all Medical Whistleblowers regardless of their professional background or licensing status.  A Medical Whistleblower is a person who has come forward to report Medical Fraud, Abuse or Neglect to State, Federal or International governmental authorities.   Medical Whistleblower provides advocacy for all regardless of national origin, religious faith, color, disability, sex, sexual orientation, or age.   Anyone with access to information related to medical fraud, abuse and neglect can be a Medical Whistleblower.   Medical Whistleblower advocates for those who have already made that choice and those still considering their future path.  There is no cost to request support from Medical Whistleblower.  Medical Whistleblower is not a counseling service and does not provide legal advice or representation. We are an advocate for change and provide meaningful information related to the Medical Whistleblower’s experience and networking contacts for further support. 

"The test of a democracy is not the magnificence of buildings or the speed of automobiles or the efficiency of air transportation, but rather the care given to the welfare of all the people."

Helen Adams Keller

Who are Medical Whistleblowers? 

Medical Whistleblowers come from all walks of life and many professional disciplines. Medical Whistleblowers can be Doctors, Pharmacists, Researchers, Police Officers,  Federal Law Enforcement Agents, Nurses, Medical Technicians, Certified Public Accountants, Attorneys, Judges, Therapists, Prosecutors, Hospital CEO’s, Academic Medical Instructors, Veterans, Emergency Medical Technicians, and even Patients and their families.   Medical Whistleblowers are themselves human rights defenders of others.   Medical Whistleblowers risk their livelihoods when they dissent in the name of transparency and openness, and in return often lose their cherished right to privacy and suffer severe personal loss.

"It is dangerous to be right
when the government is wrong."

VOLTAIRE

"When even one American -who has done nothing wrong - is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth, then all Americans are in peril."

                                                                                            ~ Harry S. Truman ~

"The universal rights of assembly and free speech must be protected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights."

-- President Barack Obama.

One of these essential Medical Whistleblowers was Allen Jones who was an investigator for the Pennsylvania Office of Inspector General of the Food and Drug Administration.  He wrote an excellent report about a criminal corruption of our governmental processes for the approval of pharmaceutical drugs and their use on vulnerable populations such as the elderly,  prisoners,  welfare recipients,  the homeless,  children, teenagers in rehab and the mentally ill.  His report as well as other supporting evidence can be seen at this link from the Psychiatric Law Project in Anchorage Alaska - Attorney Jim Gottstein.

Allen Jones Report

“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government - lest it come to dominate our lives and interests”.
- Patrick Henry -

The New Freedom Commission on Mental Health was established by U.S. President George W. Bush in April 2002 to conduct a comprehensive study of the U.S. mental health service delivery system and make recommendations about pharmaceutical treatment.  The commission, using the Texas Medication Algorithm Project (TMAP) as a blueprint, subsequently recommended screening of American adults for possible mental illnesses, and children for emotional disturbances in order to increase the use of highly controversial and inadequately tested pharmaceutical drugs.  Many of these drugs were found to be dangerous and had serious long term health effects as well as being so physically addictive that it was almost impossible to take the patient off them after they had been initiated. There are few potential benefits from the Texas Medical Algorithm plan, except increased profits for pharmaceutical companies.  There are serious concerns about the potential for unnecessarily causing neurological damage and contributing to increased medical costs,  potential substance abuse and pharmaceutical drug dependence. 

NAMI and other pharmaceutical industry front organizations are used to compromise of scientific integrity under color of authority.  Organizations that protect the civil rights of the disabled  look askance at the irony of the use of the word freedom, contending the commission is yet another example of the excesses of drug industry marketing.  The effects of the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health recommendations are to simply foster drug use rather than the prevention of mental illness and use of alternative treatment modalities. 

TMAP, which was created in 1995 while President Bush was governor of Texas, began as an alliance of individuals from the University of Texas, the pharmaceutical industry, and the mental health and corrections systems of Texas. Through the guise of TMAP, critics contend, the drug industry has methodically influenced the decision making of elected and appointed public officials to gain access to citizens in prisons and State psychiatric hospitals. 

Allen Jones was the investigator for the Office of Inspector General regarding the approval of psychotropic drugs by the Food and Drug Administration. Allen Jones, was a former investigator in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Office of Inspector General (OIG), Bureau of Special Investigations.  His very detailed report can be found on the Psychrights.org website.   

Many critics contend that the strategy behind the commission was developed by the pharmaceutical industry, advancing the theory that the primary purpose of the commission was to recommend implementation of TMAP based algorithms on a nationwide basis. TMAP, which advises the use of newer, more expensive medications, has itself has been the subject of controversy in Texas, Pennsylvania and other states where efforts have been made to implement its use. 

Jones wrote a lengthy report in which he stated that, behind the recommendations of the New Freedom Commission, was the "political/pharmaceutical alliance." It was this alliance, according to Jones, which developed the Texas project, specifically to promote the use of newer, more expensive antipsychotics and antidepressants. He further claimed this alliance was "poised to consolidate the TMAP effort into a comprehensive national policy to treat mental illness with expensive, patented medications of questionable benefit and deadly side effects, and to force private insurers to pick up more of the tab." 

A coalition of over 100 advocacy organizations, united under the banner of Mindfreedom.org in representing the psychiatric survivors movement, has been galvanized by their strong opposition to the New Freedom Commission.

See also articles on this website

http://psychrights.org/articles/articles.htm

Opponents of the New Freedom Commission plan have questioned the motives of the commission, largely from a civil liberties perspective, asserting the initiative campaign is little more than a thinly veiled proxy for the pharmaceutical industry, which, in its pursuit of profits, is too eager to foster psychotropic medication interventions. Some opponents contend that its objectives are to foster chemical behavior control of American citizens.  The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was receiving reports of increased rates of suicide, especially during the first months of drug use and widespread extra label use of these medications in direct violation of their black box warning about potential adverse side effects.

"TeenScreen"  which was a program to screen every American shoolchild for mental disease,  represented naked pharmaceutical company greed.   Even before these New Freedom Commission recommendations were made there were 15 million Americans on Zyprexa (7.4 million) and Risperdal (7.6 million) alone in 2002.   Sales of atypical antipsychotic drugs reached $6.4 billion, making them the fourth best selling class of drugs in America. The combined sales of antidepressants and antipsychotics jumped from around $500 million in 1986 to nearly $20 billion in 2004 – a 40-fold increase. (Anatomy of an Epidemic: Psychiatric Drugs and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America by Robert Whitaker, Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, Volume 7, Number I , Spring 2005)  The article is available at:http://psychrights.org/Articles/EHPPPsychDrugEpidemic(Whitaker).pdf

In April, 2000, AHRP filed a complaint about the experiment, with the Office of Human Research Protection--see:http://www.ahrp.org/Initiatives/YaleComplaint.php

But this was not enough profit for the pharmaceutical companies and therefore additional marketing and political pressure were used to create a public mental health policy to screen children and get more of them on atypical antipsychotics.   This was the TeenScreen program which was designed to diagnose mental illness in teenagers, but has been shown to be coercive and unreliable.   The same political/pharmaceutical alliance that generated the Texas project is behind the New Freedom Commission.   Using the marketing strategy behind TeenScreen, this alliance is lobbying to consolidate the TMAP effort into a comprehensive national policy and thus force on children and adults  expensive, patented medications of questionable benefit and deadly side effects.  The global pharmaceutical market is forecast to grow to US $842 billion in 2010 (Pharmaceutical Market Trends 2006-2010 by S. Seget)

Health professionals also have a duty to support colleagues who speak out against human rights violations. Failure to do so risks not only an infringement of patient rights and a contravention of the declarations listed above but also brings the health professions into disrepute.

The World Medical Association’s Declaration of Tokyo reiterates the prohibition of any form of medical participation or medical presence in torture or ill-treatment.  World Psychiatric Association’s Declaration of Hawaii, prohibits the misuse of psychiatric skills to violate the human rights of any individual or group. The International Conference on Islamic Medicine made a similar point in its Declaration of Kuwait, which bans doctors from allowing their special knowledge to be used “to harm, destroy or inflict damage on the body, mind or spirit, whatever the military or political reason”.   Similar provisions are made for nurses in the directive on the Nurse’s Role in the Care of Detainees and Prisoners.

The World Medical Association’s resolution on human rights calls on all national medical associations to review the human rights situation in their own countries and ensure that doctors do not conceal evidence of abuse even where they fear reprisal.  It also requires that they support individual doctors who call attention to human rights abuses.  The World Medical Association’s subsequent Declaration of Hamburg reaffirms the responsibility of individuals and organized medical groups worldwide to encourage doctors to resist torture or any pressure to act contrary to ethical principles. It calls upon individual doctors to speak out against maltreatment and urges national and international medical organizations to support doctors who resist such pressure.

An absolutely fundamental precept of modern medical ethics is that patients themselves are the best judge of their own interests. This requires health professionals to give normal precedence to a competent adult patient’s wishes rather than to the views of any person in authority about what would be best for that individual.

The World Medical Association’s Declaration of Lisbon specifies the duty for doctors to obtain voluntary and informed consent from mentally competent patients to any examination or procedure. This means that individuals need to know the implications of agreeing and the consequences of refusing. Before examining patients, health professionals must, therefore, explain frankly the purpose of the examination and treatment. Consent obtained under duress or as a result of false information being given to the patient is invalid, and doctors acting on it are likely to be in breach of medical ethics. The graver the implications of the procedure for the patient, the greater the moral imperative to obtain properly informed consent. (Istanbul Protocol -  UN 2004)

Three safeguards advocated by the Committee for persons held in police custody are:

(a) The right of a person deprived of liberty, if he or she so desires, to inform immediately a third party (family member) of the arrest;
(b) The right of a person deprived of liberty to have immediate access to a lawyer;
(c) The right of a person deprived of liberty to have access to a physician, including, if he or she so wishes, a physician of his or her own choice.

Even when doctors are appointed and paid by a third party, they retain a clear duty of care to any patient whom they examine or treat. They must refuse to comply with any procedures that may harm patients or leave them physically or psychologically vulnerable to harm. They must ensure that their contractual terms allow them professional independence to make clinical judgments.  Doctors must ensure that any person in custody has access to any medical examination and treatment needed.

The State is responsible for protecting alleged victims, witnesses and their families from violence, threats of violence or any other form of intimidation that may arise pursuant to the investigation. Those potentially implicated in torture should be removed from any position of control or power, whether direct or indirect over complainants, witnesses and their families as well as those conducting investigations. Investigators must give constant consideration to the effect of the investigation on the safety of the person alleging torture and other witnesses.

In his autobiography, You Can’t be Neutral on a Moving Train, Howard Zinn wrote:

“To be hopeful in bad times is not foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history of not only cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places – and there are so many – where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

Directives for Human Experimentation

NUREMBERG CODE

1. The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, over-reaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision. This latter element requires that before the acceptance of an affirmative decision by the experimental subject there should be made known to him the nature, duration, and purpose of the experiment; the method and means by which it is to be conducted; all inconveniences and hazards reasonable to be expected; and the effects upon his health or person which may possibly come from his participation in the experiment.
   
   The duty and responsibility for ascertaining the quality of the consent rests upon each individual who initiates, directs or engages in the experiment. It is a personal duty and responsibility which may not be delegated to another with impunity.
2. The experiment should be such as to yield fruitful results for the good of society, unprocurable by other methods or means of study, and not random and unnecessary in nature.
3. The experiment should be so designed and based on the results of animal experimentation and a knowledge of the natural history of the disease or other problem under study that the anticipated results will justify the performance of the experiment.
4. The experiment should be so conducted as to avoid all unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury.
5. No experiment should be conducted where there is an a priori reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur; except, perhaps, in those experiments where the experimental physicians also serve as subjects.
6. The degree of risk to be taken should never exceed that determined by the humanitarian importance of the problem to be solved by the experiment.
7. Proper preparations should be made and adequate facilities provided to protect the experimental subject against even remote possibilities of injury, disability, or death.
8. The experiment should be conducted only by scientifically qualified persons. The highest degree of skill and care should be required through all stages of the experiment of those who conduct or engage in the experiment.
9. During the course of the experiment the human subject should be at liberty to bring the experiment to an end if he has reached the physical or mental state where continuation of the experiment seems to him to be impossible.
10. During the course of the experiment the scientist in charge must be prepared to terminate the experiment at any stage, if he has probable cause to believe, in the exercise of the good faith, superior skill and careful judgment required of him that a continuation of the experiment is likely to result in injury, disability, or death to the experimental subject.

Reprinted from Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10, Vol. 2, pp. 181-182.. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1949.

45 CFR 46 Protection Of Human Subjects

Guidelines for Conduct of Research Involving Human Subjects at NIH (Gray Booklet) (pdf file)

The Belmont Report Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research

Nuremberg Code Directives for Human Experimentation

World Medical Association Declaration Of Helsinki

List of all Institutions Holding Assurances
Note: You must perform a search on “Assurances (FWAs)” from that page

Victim’s Rights and Needs: Requirements for a Victim’s Rights System

• Compensation
• Redress
• Testimony
• Truth
• Acknowledgment
• Memory
• Reparation
• Justice
• Prevention (Never Again!)

JUSTICE

“As I've gotten older, I've had more of a tendency to look for people who live by kindness, tolerance, compassion, a gentler way of looking at things.“

~ Martin Scorsese

Senator Whitehouse called on all Americans to remember that the Constitution provides not just basic rights, but a mechanism to make sure that those rights cannot be trampled by wealthy and powerful interests:

"The jury serves as our last sanctuary, as Americans, when the forces of society may be arrayed against us: when the governor’s mansion has been bought by special interests; when lobbyists have the legislature tied in knots; when the newspaper owners have steered public opinion against you – the hard square corners of the jury box stand firm against the influence and money of special interests."

1. Politics without principles
2. Wealth without work
3. Pleasure without conscience
4. Knowledge without character
5. Commerce without morality
6. Science without humanity
7. Worship without sacrifice.

"Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach."

-- Clarissa Pinolla Estes

"For every complex problem there is a simple solution that is wrong."

G.B. Shaw 1856-1950,

Irish critic and poet, famous for his 'verbal wit'