MatrixLeaks

Over 40,000 human guinea pigs participate in drug testing experiments run by huge pharmaceutical companies in the United States annually. Most of these people are poor and “down-and-outers,” who need the money drug testing provides.Ever since the mid-1970s, when the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) issued stricter rules on informed consent, high compensation has been necessary to attract research subjects for pharmaceutical tests. This generally means that the lowest income people in the U.S. are the ones who participate, since few people with comfortable financial circumstances volunteer to be guinea pigs for the drug companies. The nation’s drug testing processes seem to be based on the exploitation of America’s lowest classes. Last fall, The Wall Street journal published an article that reported Eli Lilly, maker of Prozac, uses homeless people to test drugs for FDA approval. The Eli Lilly program, which pays $85 per day, is reportedly famous “through soup kitchens, prisons, an...

The Mexican government acknowledged Sunday that US intelligence and military officials are deployed inside Mexico, but refused to confirm details of a published report on their role in the country’s “drug war” for reasons of “national security.” Mexico’s National Security Council issued a statement August 7 in response to a front-page article in the New York Times which reported that the Obama administration has sent “new CIA operatives and retired military personnel” to the country and is “considering plans to deploy private security contractors” in an effort to escalate the bloody war against drug cartels. The Times article, written by Ginger Thompson, who was the paper’s Mexico City bureau chief for nearly 15 years, reported that the military and intelligence officials were operating out of a military base in the north of Mexico. The paper acknowledged that it was withholding the location of the base at the request of the US administration. The Mexican government statement cla...

The morning of June 20, 2006, an email message circulated amongst US Defense Department officials.” Jed Babbin, one of our military analysts, is hosting the Michael Medved nationally syndicated radio show this afternoon. He would like to see if General [George W.] Casey would be available for a phone interview,” the Pentagon staffer wrote. “This would be a softball interview and the show is 8th or 9th in the nation.” Why would the Pentagon help set up a radio interview? And how did they know that the interview would be “softball”? From early 2002 to April 2008, the Department of Defense offered talking points, organized trips to places such as Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, and gave private briefings to a legion of retired military officers working as media pundits. The Pentagon’s military analyst program, a covert effort to promote a positive image of the Bush administration’s wartime performance, was a multi-level campaign involving quite a few colorful characters. One Pentagon pundi...