FYI. This is important for the UK disability community to know about.
Exploitation of children, whether for pornography or other immoral
money-making schemes, is morally repulsive. Here we see vulnerable foster
kids first turned into guinea pigs and the hazardous results turned on other
kids and marketed under the guise of protecting the "public health."
Needless to say, Ed Balls has balls to appoint Paul Blackburn, senior Vice
President of GlaxoSmithKline to be on the board of Ofsted, a UK watchdog
regulating education--as well as having responsibility for monitoring
children in care (foster care).
UK disability research listserv members voice your protest agaisnt
this unseemly conflict of interests appointment by ballsy Ed Balls.
--JHN
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of VERACARE
Sent: Sunday, July 06, 2008 2:10 PM
To: [log in to unmask] org
Subject: GSK senior V-P Appointed to Watchdog Education Board
Importance: High
ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION
Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability
http://www.ahrp.org and http://ahrp.blogspot.com
FYI
There is reason for serious concern about pharmaceutical industry
penetration into public policy bodies and public education systems in the
U.S. and in the UK.
This industry's influence peddling has but one goal--increasing profits
through market expansion.
For example, in the US, Merck garnered political support for mandatory
vaccination of 11 year old school girls with its HPV vaccine, Gardasil,
competitor to GSK's vaccine--until there was a public backlash leading
states to rescind mandatory HPV policies.
http://ahrp.blogspot.com/2007/02/mandatory-gardasil-produces-backlashusa.htm
l
In the UK, the Daily Mail reports (below) school secretary, Ed Balls,
appointed Paul Blackburn, senior Vice President of GlaxoSmithKline to be on
the board of Ofsted, a watchdog regulating education--as well as having
responsibility for monitoring children in care (foster care).
The appointment comes despite the fact that GSK continues to be at the
center of multiple controversies involving unethical conduct.
GSK has a lengthy rap sheet of unethical corporate conduct--including
fraudulent marketing of Paxil (Seroxat).
Indeed, GSK is being sued on both sides of the Atlantic by parents whose
children became suicidal after ingesting GSK's antidepressant, Paxil.
What's more, the appointment comes in the midst of furor over the government
awarding GlaxoSmithKline with a £100 million contract to vaccinate all
schoolgirls aged 12 and 13 with the HPV vaccine against sexually transmitted
papillomavirus.
"the appointment demonstrated an unhealthily cosy relationship between the
Government and GSK, the world’s second biggest pharmaceutical company."
What outraged childcare expert Phil Frampton, the most upon hearing of
Blackburn's appointment, is GSK’s history of testing drugs on children in
[foster] care.
"Do we want the modern Bodysnatchers at the heart of the care system using
their position on Ofsted as a cover for their global exploitation of
children in care?"
The Daily Mail referred to GSK's participation in unethical AIDS
drug-vaccine trials in the U.S. which were the subject of a BBC-Two
documentary "Guinea Pig Kids" that aired (Nov. 2004)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/this_world/4038375.stm
"The New York health authority recently investigated claims that drugs were
tested on 100 babies and toddlers with HIV at the city’s Incarnation
Children’s Centre. GSK was one of the firms that supplied the drugs."
In fact, that investigation by the Vera Institute of Justice, has since
uncovered 796 children in New York who may have been used as guinea pigs in
high risk, painful experiments without legally valid informed consent. See:
http://www.vera.org/publication_pdf/472_868.pdf
The case underscores the collusion between government, industry and the
medical research stakeholders: After failing to obtain the children's
medical records from the Medical Center of Columbia University, the Vera
Institute requested access to the records from The New York State Health
Department. The Health Department has denied access--effectively preventing
the Vera Institute from conducting a proper investigation. The NYSDH cited
confidentiality--the usual ploy used by bureaucracies to protect
institutions from being held accountable. We call that a cover-up and
continued devaluation of these anonymous, black and Hispanic children. The
impenetrable institutional wall of silence underscores the complicity of the
medical-pharmaceutical-government establishment--a veritable juggernaut.
Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
[log in to unmask]
212-595-8974
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1032411/Boss-drug-firm-cervical-cancer-jabs
-schoolgirls-b
Daily Mail (UK
Sunday, July 06 2008
Boss of drug firm behind cervical cancer jabs for schoolgirls is on board of
Ofsted
By Eileen Fairweather
Paul Blackburn, a senior vice president at GlaxoSmithKline, has been
appointed to the board of Ofsted
Schools Secretary Ed Balls is at the centre of a controversy over the
appointment of a top executive with a drugs company to the board of
education watchdog Ofsted.
Paul Blackburn, 53, is a senior vice-president at GlaxoSmithKline, which is
being sued by hundreds of parents and patients who claim its drugs have
caused suicide and psychosis.
His appointment came two weeks before the company won a reported £100million
contract to vaccinate all schoolgirls of 12 and 13 against the sexually
transmitted virus linked to cervical cancer. Family campaigners argued that
the jabs would ‘normalise’ childhood sex.
Mr Blackburn’s new role has been met with such disquiet that one childcare
expert boycotted an Ofsted conference on Friday, and urged others to make a
similar stand.
Announcing the appointment, Mr Balls, one of Gordon Brown’s closest
advisers, said Mr Blackburn had a ‘passion’ for helping children.
But critics fear GSK’s place on the Ofsted board has given it instant moral
authority and has commercially strengthened its position at a time when
children are being targeted by the pharmaceutical industry.
They point to the rise in the use of prescription pills to improve behaviour
and aid memory and concentration. Some have been linked to depression and
violence in children.
Labour MP Graham Stringer said: ‘It (GSK) is looking at new markets to
create and I am disturbed that someone from Glaxo is considered appropriate
for a position with Ofsted.’
Others said the appointment demonstrated an unhealthily cosy relationship
between the Government and GSK, the world’s second biggest pharmaceutical
company, formerly known as Glaxo Wellcome.
Last year its chief executive Jean Pierre Garnier was appointed by Gordon
Brown to his new Business Council, while Children’s Minister Margaret Hodge
made the company’s chairman a member of the Higher Education Funding
Council. But the latest appointment places the drugs multinational at the
heart of childcare.
A girl is given the cervical cancer vaccine. GlaxoSmithKline has the
£100million contract to vaccinate all schoolgirls aged 12 and 13
Labour and GSK are also linked through the cash-for-honours controversy.
Although GSK stresses it does not make donations to political parties, it
has invested heavily in a firm run by a man who has.
In 2004 Labour awarded a peerage to party donor Dr Paul Drayson, founder of
vaccine firm PowderJect pharmaceuticals, and made him Minister for Defence
Procurement. It later emerged that Glaxo Wellcome had invested £175million
in PowderJect.
Mr Blackburn was one of four businessmen installed on the Ofsted board last
month. ‘They bring with them a breadth of private sector experience and a
passion to help improve the lives of children and learners,’ said Mr Balls.
As well as setting Ofsted’s ‘strategic priorities’, the 12-strong
non-executive board is required to ‘safeguard and promote the rights and
welfare of children’.
Mr Blackburn is financial controller at GSK. Mr Balls’s department insisted
he was appointed to Ofsted on merit and was not representing GSK, but
questions were last night raised about his suitability. Child protection
expert Liz Davies asked whether he would understand ‘key childcare issues
such as why new systems are failing to keep children safe from harm.’
Schools Secretary Ed Balls made the controversial decision to appoint Mr
Blackburn to the board of Ofsted
As well as regulating education, Ofsted is responsible for monitoring
children in care.
Outlining his reasons for pulling out of the Ofsted conference he was due to
address, childcare expert Phil Frampton blamed GSK’s history of testing
drugs on children in care.
The New York health authority recently investigated claims that drugs were
tested on 100 babies and toddlers with HIV at the city’s Incarnation
Children’s Centre. GSK was one of the firms that supplied the drugs.
At the time it insisted that all trials followed stringent standards and
complied with local laws and regulations.
But Mr Frampton – who called Mr Blackburn’s appointment ‘really outrageous’
– said: ‘Drug trials using children in care are a modern form of child
slavery, only more insidious.
‘Do we want the modern Bodysnatchers at the heart of the care system using
their position on Ofsted as a cover for their global exploitation of
children in care?’
In 2000 Glaxo Wellcome was accused of extraordinary ‘obfuscation’ by
Ireland’s senate after a commission unsuccessfully sought files concerning
vaccine trials it conducted in the Sixties and Seventies on children in care
homes. At the time the firm said: ‘Glaxo Wellcome regrets any distress that
may have been caused to individuals involved in these trials.’
Last night GSK rejected criticism of Mr Blackburn’s appointment and
described Mr Frampton’s comments as ‘without foundation’. It added: ‘GSK
acts properly and responsibly in the conduct of all its clinical trials,
including those related to children.’
GSK faces class actions in Britain and the US by hundreds of families whose
children allegedly became suicidal, psychotic or addicted after taking its
anti-depressant Seroxat. The company was accused of concealing its adverse
effects on children for more than a decade.
Legal action in the US recently forced GSK to publish studies showing that
children on Seroxat are twice as likely to have suicidal thoughts as those
on a dummy pill. Although GSK says: ‘Seroxat has never been approved by EU
or US regulators as a medicine for those under 18,’ many doctors legally
give it to children in a practice known as ‘off label’ prescribing.
Schools and the state childcare boom present a lucrative market for drugs
including those to treat obesity, unplanned pregnancies, sexually
transmitted diseases and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
GSK markets an anti-ADHD drug in the United States – amphetamine Dexedrine –
and may yet try to market it or a similar drug in Britain.
It recommends Dexedrine for ‘stabilising’ patients from three years to 16
who exhibit ‘distractibility, short attention span and hyperactivity’.
Critics say this could describe any normal toddler or hormonal teen, and
drugs should be a last resort.
Since 2006, the US Food and Drug Administration has made ADHD drugs
manufacturers provide warnings of potentially fatal reactions in those with
weak hearts, and the risk of ‘psychotic or manic symptoms, for example
hallucinations, delusional thinking, or mania in children and adolescents
without a prior history’.
The FDA has linked ADHD drugs to 25 deaths in the US, and they are allegedly
linked to the deaths of seven in Britain.
Ofsted said in a statement: ‘The Ofsted Board determines the strategic
direction for Ofsted and ensures that its functions are performed
efficiently and effectively, but has no operational responsibilities.
‘Paul Blackburn was selected to become a non-executive member of the Ofsted
Board for his financial expertise and experience. He is appointed as an
individual and does not represent GlaxoSmithKline.’
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