On 2005-11-09 19:55:00, Anonymous wrote:
Not to sound like an idiot but could you paraphrase that report from Wes. I understood it to mean that we were not literally test subjects at Straight, but that mainly the SEED was the one required to have consent forms. That is to say that the only "consent form" I definitively remember signing would have been my intake form and the intake. Was that what would have been a coerced signature as per Wes's report. Perhaps I didn't catch what I was supposed to."
Well no. When Art Barker hawked the Program, he did it just the same way Straight did and just the way the other programs do now. He said it was a proven program w/ a 99% success rate. However, at some point in the early `70's ALL of the federally funded behavior modification programs came under scrutiny. The Seed was one of those.
At the end of the report and subsiquent hearings, the Senate determined that, in order to keep the federal funding coming in the programs had to disclose a little bit of the truth; that the Program was not proven, it was experimental and that it was not necessarily safe.
Art wouldn't play ball so he got the bum's rush. Two years after St. Pete Seed shut down, Melvin set up Straight and simply ignored those guidelines w/ full complicity from LEAA (his cop buddies) and anyone else who might have prvented that disaster.
But that was all about the basic method. Nothing about using it to generate bogus research. They kept on w/ that too. MacDonald was a director of medical research for Straight before Reagan appointed him Deputy Assistant for Drug Abuse Policy. Just look at the timeline. He's a pedeiatrician in Clearwater, he puts his son in Straight and
BOOM, suddenly he's appointed Deputy Assistant to the president. Something is fucking fishy here, isn't it?
http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/s ... 80488a.htm
Appointment of Donald Ian Macdonald as Deputy Assistant to the President for Drug Abuse Policy
August 4, 1988
The President today announced the appointment of Donald Ian Macdonald, M.D., to be Deputy Assistant to the President for Drug Abuse Policy at the White House. Dr. Macdonald is currently serving as Special Assistant to the President. Dr. Macdonald will continue as the President's adviser for drug abuse policy and is also providing advice and assistance regarding AIDS and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) epidemic.
Dr. Macdonald came to the White House as Special Assistant to the President in February 1987 from the Department of Health and Human Services, where he served as Administrator of the Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration from July 1984 to June 1988. He also served as Acting Assistant Secretary for Health from December 1985 to July 1986. Dr. Macdonald is an Assistant Surgeon General in the U.S. Public Health Service and, since his appointment by the President in 1984, has served as a Governor of the American National Red Cross. Prior to joining the administration, Dr. Macdonald was a practicing pediatrician in Clearwater, FL, and a national leader in the parents movement against drug abuse. He was a clinical associate professor of pediatrics at the University of South Florida, College of Medicine, and a member of the Florida Medical Association, serving as chairman of the association's committee on substance abuse. He has been affiliated with numerous professional and public organizations and is the author of numerous articles on substance abuse and related topics.
Today, you can still see the bloody fingerprints of Program fanatics in their publicly citing as proof of the addictiveness of cannabis the fact that they've been able to coerce so many of us to confess powerlessness over it and to beg for help.
Tell me, please, where did you think all this lunacy was coming from?
The last struggles of a great superstition are very frequently the worst.
--Andrew Dickson White (1832-1918)
