Incarnation Children's Center

From AIDS Wiki

Incarnation Children's Center (ICC) is a nursing facility in New York City. From 1989 until 2000, the center operated as a foster care boarding home; since then it has concentrated on providing medical care. The ICC was founded to deal with the "boarder baby" crisis; children of crack addicted mothers abandoning their babies after birth at public hospitals.

ICC has reported that it is a non-profit corporation affiliated with the Archdiocese of New York and Columbia University.

Contents 1 Clinical trials 2 Abuse allegations 3 Damage control 4 Documents and external links 4.1 Media coverage 4.2 Interviews 5 References

Clinical trials

Between 1993 and 2002, around 60 children at the ICC took part in clinical trials sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, and several pharmaceutical companies, including GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Genentech, and Chiron/Biocine, to test the efficacy of antiretroviral drugs, alongside thousands of other children across the United States. The drugs included AZT and its analogs (DDL, 3TC, and others), and Nevirapine; the drugs all bear the FDA's black box warning label, meaning they have caused severe and permanent injury or death in patients taking them at prescribed doses.

It is contended by the agencies that support these trials that the results of these trials contributed to the approval of new therapies for HIV-positive children (ICC 2008).

Abuse allegations

In 2004, the independent journalist Liam Scheff reported that the ICC was abusing children by force-feeding them HIV drugs, whose toxicities are well-recorded in the medical literature, and on the drug's own warning labels. He interviewed ICC's primary physician, Dr. Katherine Painter, who told him that children who could not take their drugs due to side effects, or refused to take them by mouth, had them administered through naso-gastric and gastric tubes (Scheff 2007a).

Scheff reviewed the clinical trials done at the ICC (Scheff 2008), and the drugs listed in them in his investigation, and reported on that in 2004 (Scheff 2004a).

At that time, Scheff interviewed two women who had adopted children from the ICC, who told him that their children were more ill when they took the medication – particularly AZT and Nevirapine – than when they were not fed these drugs (Scheff 2004b). The story was later investigated by The Guardian and other mainstream news sources, including the Associated Press, which did an independent investigation, and found that improper use of orphans and children in government and pharmaceutical-sponsored clinical trials was occurring nation-wide (Barnett 2004).

Some staff at the center have vehemently denied claims of mistreatment, asserting that all trials were well run and highly beneficial to the children (Scott & Kaufman 2005).

Scheff interviewed several child-care workers and nurses from ICC, who told him that the drugs caused regular and often violent bouts of vomiting and diarrhea (Scheff 2005) and that Thalidomide was used on at least one small boy at the ICC, named Seon (Scheff 2007b).

Scheff was interviewed at length by two reporters from the New York Times in mid 2006, a year and a half after Scheff's original story broke. The New York Times described Scheff's story as "backed up with no official documentation as supporting proof, and put out on the Internet in early 2004 after the author was unable to get the story published anywhere else," thereby acting as protectors of the drug trials, rather than investigating either the legality of the trials, the actual results, the toxicity of the drugs used, or the validity of the tests used on the children to give them an HIV diagnosis.

The Times further claimed that, there is "little evidence that the trials were anything but a medical success", and dramatically reduced death rates among children with HIV (↑). Scheff claims that he provided pages of documentation to Janny Scott and Leslie Kaufman, and has publicly accused them of libel and of serving editorial interests, rather than reporting the details of the story.

Unlike Scheff, the Times reporting did not focus on mothers and children or patients from the ICC, but instead sought the opinion of Dr. Stephen Nicholas, the doctor who established the clinical trials program at ICC, and is a major recipient of funding from Columbia Presbyterian, to run similar studies in the Dominican Republic.

Damage control

After the story broke, public interest was high. The story appeared on the pages of many magazines and journals, and on radio and television programs. The incident was and is extremely embarrassing to the AIDS establishment, which tightly monitors and controls its message and image through advertising, public campaigns, and attacks on those who offer criticism.

The attacks on Scheff's story were seen almost immediately, first and foremost by an AIDS activist named Jeanne Bergman, who wrote at attack in the New York Press in 2005 (Bergman 2005).

Scheff maintains that the attacks serve to divert attention from the reality, that very small, vulnerable, orphaned children were and are being used in drug trials with very strong Black-Box labeled drugs, and that this is done in the name of AIDS, and of saving lives.

The proponents of the trials posit that the New York State Department of Health has found that none of the abuse allegations has been substantiated, and that the source of the accusations "appears to be a group of individuals holding the view that HIV does not cause AIDS – a view discredited by scientific and medical consensus around the world." (Birkhead 2005)

Scheff, for his part, has no idea what this means, as he was not a group, but was a concerned citizen and reporter, trying to focus public attention on some of the most vulnerable members of society who were and are being used in government and pharmaceutical-sponsored drug trials, in an orphanage, with drugs that bear the FDA's Black Box label, in combinations of drugs numbering up to "7 at at time," "some at higher than normal doses."

Scheff does openly question the use of HIV tests, as they are lack standardization and are cross-reactive, as recorded in the mainstream literature for 25 years (ARAS 2008).

In early 2007, "AIDSTruth.org" a group of activist AIDS scientists and activists, including Mark Wainberg, demanded a retraction and apology from the BBC, which made a television documentary about the ICC based on Scheff's reporting.

The documentary featured interviews with mothers and children who had been in the ICC. No doctor or representative from the ICC or from Columbia Presbyterian would agree to appear on camera in the documentary, though they were repeatedly invited.

"Aidstruth" said that the BBC program, Guinea Pig Kids, was "inflammatory, deceptive, error-filled and dangerous" (AIDSTruth 2007).

The "AIDSTruth" group publicly calls any scientist, activist or citizen who disagrees openly with them on any aspect of Aids, a "denialist," and has likened those with divergent views on AIDS as "holocaust denialists."

The BBC upheld several of the group's complaints, but could not and did not retract the primary point of Scheff's work, or the reality of the trials at ICC: that they occurred, that they were done on a captive population of orphans, and that the drugs used have toxic effects.

AIDSTruth did achieve one goal, in getting the BBC to offer a limited apology, essentially for not representing their side well enough in the film. The corporation acknowledged that the film made false and misleading claims, and "was biased towards the views of [what 'AIDSTruth,' without irony, or apology, calls] 'AIDS denialists'" (Steel 2007, Holmwood 2007).

Documents and external links

• Incarnation Children's Center website
• "Guinea Pig Kids" website

Media coverage

• The House That AIDS Built by Liam Scheff (2004)
• UK firm tried HIV drug on orphans by Antony Barnett (2004)
• ICC Investigation Continues by Liam Scheff (2004)
• Orphans on Trial by Liam Scheff (2004)
• Noble Doctors by Liam Scheff (2004)
• Guinea Pig Kids at BBC (2004)
  • thisworld programme
  • New York's HIV Experiment by Jamie Doran
• Still on Trial by Liam Scheff (2005)
• Belated Charge Ignites Furor Over AIDS Drug Trial by Janny Scott and Leslie Kaufman (2005)
• All the News That Fits...Two Year Later by Liam Scheff (2005)
• NY Times to the Rescue by Liam Scheff (2005)
• Drugs, Disease, Denial (2005)
  • By Jeanne Bergman
  • By Celia Farber
• Inside Incarnation by Liam Scheff (2005)
• More New York Times Bullshit on the AIDS/ICC Scandal by Liam Scheff (2005)
• BBC Complaint
  • AIDS Activists and Scientists File Complaint Against the BBC over HIV Disinformation (2007)
  • Response by BBC to Jeanne Bergman (2007)
• The ICC Website and Clinical Trials by Liam Scheff (2007)
• The ICC Tapes by Liam Scheff (2007)
• Thalidomide for Black Orphans by Liam Scheff (2007)
• 'Serious concern' at BBC over flawed HIV film by Leigh Holmwood (2007)

Interviews

• Lizz Brown interviews Liam Scheff (2006)
• Heather Anderson interviews Liam Scheff (2006)
• Liam Scheff interviews Katherine Painter (2007)

References