also: America's shocking secret: Pictures that show how U.S. experimented on its own disabled citizens and prison inmates
Six Million Children Maltreated in 2009?
http://www.childlaw.us/2011/02/six-million-children-maltreate.html
By James R. Marsh February 3, 2011
In 2009, an estimated 3.3 million referrals involving the alleged maltreatment of approximately 6.0 million children were received by CPS agencies nationwide. Of these, CPS determined that at least one child was a unique victim of abuse and neglect in 702,000 cases. The rest were unsubstantiated or closed with no finding.
These and other data appear in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Child Maltreatment 2009, the 20th in a series of reports designed to provide national statistics on child abuse and neglect.
Most states recognize four major types of maltreatment: neglect, physical abuse, psychological maltreatment, and sexual abuse. Although any of the forms of child maltreatment may be found separately, they also can occur in combination....
More than 75 percent (78.3%) suffered neglect;
More than 15 percent (17.8%) suffered physical abuse;
Less than 10 percent (9.5%) suffered sexual abuse; and
Less than 10 percent (7.6%) suffered from psychological maltreatment....
For the analyses included in this report, a perpetrator is the person who is responsible for the abuse or neglect of a child. Forty-nine States reported case-level data about perpetrators using unique identifiers. In these States, the total duplicate count of perpetrators was 894,951 and the total unique count of perpetrators was 512,790.
For 2009:
Four-fifths (80.9%) of duplicate perpetrators of child maltreatment were parents, and another 6.3 percent were other relatives of the victim;
Of the duplicate perpetrators who were parents, four-fifths (84.7%) were the biological parents of the victim;
Women comprised a larger percentage of all unique perpetrators than men, 53.8 percent compared to 44.4 percent; and
Four-fifths (83.2%) of all unique perpetrators were between the ages of 20 and 49 years.
The full report is available on the Children's Bureau website:
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/pubs/cm09/cm09.pdf
America's shocking secret: Pictures that show how U.S. experimented on its own disabled citizens and prison inmates By Daily Mail Reporter
28th February 2011 Pictures have emerged providing the shocking proof that U.S. government doctors once experimented on disabled American citizens and prison inmates.
Such experiments included giving hepatitis to mental patients in Connecticut, squirting a pandemic flu virus up the noses of prisoners in Maryland, and injecting cancer cells into chronically ill people at a New York hospital. Much of this horrific history is 40 to 80 years old, but it is the backdrop for a meeting in Washington this week by a presidential bioethics commission.
The meeting was triggered by the government's apology last year for federal doctors infecting prisoners and mental patients in Guatemala with syphilis 65 years ago.
U.S. officials also acknowledged there had been dozens of similar experiments in America - studies that often involved making healthy people sick.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1361275/Americas-shocking-secret-US-experimented-disabled-citizens-prison-inmates.html
Monday, February 28, 2011
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Horrific US Medical Experiments Come to Light
describes experiments
"Many prominent researchers felt it was legitimate to experiment on people who did not have full rights in society - people like prisoners, mental patients, poor blacks. It was an attitude in some ways similar to that of Nazi doctors experimenting on Jews."
"In widely covered congressional hearings in 1973, pharmaceutical industry officials acknowledged they were using prisoners for testing because they were cheaper than chimpanzees."
Horrific US Medical Experiments Come to Light Feb 27, 2011 Mike Stobbe AP
ATLANTA -- Shocking as it may seem, U.S. government doctors once thought it was fine to experiment on disabled people and prison inmates. Such experiments included giving hepatitis to mental patients in Connecticut, squirting a pandemic flu virus up the noses of prisoners in Maryland, and injecting cancer cells into chronically ill people at a New York hospital.
Much of this horrific history is 40 to 80 years old, but it is the backdrop for a meeting in Washington this week by a presidential bioethics commission. The meeting was triggered by the government's apology last fall for federal doctors infecting prisoners and mental patients in Guatemala with syphilis 65 years ago.
U.S. officials also acknowledged there had been dozens of similar experiments in the United States - studies that often involved making healthy people sick.
An exhaustive review by The Associated Press of medical journal reports and decades-old press clippings found more than 40 such studies. At best, these were a search for lifesaving treatments; at worst, some amounted to curiosity-satisfying experiments that hurt people but provided no useful results....
In this June 25, 1945 photo, a doctor exposes a patient to malaria-carrying mosquitoes at Stateville Penitentiary in Crest Hill, Ill. A series of malaria studies at Stateville and two other prisons were designed to test antimalarial drugs that could have helped soldiers fighting in the Pacific during World War II....
Many prominent researchers felt it was legitimate to experiment on people who did not have full rights in society - people like prisoners, mental patients, poor blacks. It was an attitude in some ways similar to that of Nazi doctors experimenting on Jews.
....The AP review of past research found:
-A federally funded study begun in 1942 injected experimental flu vaccine in male patients at a state insane asylum in Ypsilanti, Mich., then exposed them to flu several months later. It was co-authored by Dr. Jonas Salk, who a decade later would become famous as inventor of the polio vaccine....
-In federally funded studies in the 1940s, noted researcher Dr. W. Paul Havens Jr. exposed men to hepatitis in a series of experiments, including one using patients from mental institutions in Middletown and Norwich, Conn. Havens, a World Health Organization expert on viral diseases, was one of the first scientists to differentiate types of hepatitis and their causes....
-Researchers in the mid-1940s studied the transmission of a deadly stomach bug by having young men swallow unfiltered stool suspension. The study was conducted at the New York State Vocational Institution, a reformatory prison in West Coxsackie....
-A University of Minnesota study in the late 1940s injected 11 public service employee volunteers with malaria, then starved them for five days. Some were also subjected to hard labor, and those men lost an average of 14 pounds. They were treated for malarial fevers with quinine sulfate....
-For a study in 1957, when the Asian flu pandemic was spreading, federal researchers sprayed the virus in the noses of 23 inmates at Patuxent prison in Jessup, Md., to compare their reactions to those of 32 virus-exposed inmates who had been given a new vaccine.
-Government researchers in the 1950s tried to infect about two dozen volunteering prison inmates with gonorrhea using two different methods in an experiment at a federal penitentiary in Atlanta. The bacteria was pumped directly into the urinary tract through the penis, according to their paper.
The men quickly developed the disease, but the researchers noted this method wasn't comparable to how men normally got infected - by having sex with an infected partner. The men were later treated with antibiotics....
in 1963. Researchers injected cancer cells into 19 old and debilitated patients at a Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital in the New York borough of Brooklyn to see if their bodies would reject them.
The hospital director said the patients were not told they were being injected with cancer cells because there was no need - the cells were deemed harmless....
At nearby Staten Island, from 1963 to 1966, a controversial medical study was conducted at the Willowbrook State School for children with mental retardation. The children were intentionally given hepatitis orally and by injection to see if they could then be cured with gamma globulin....
In widely covered congressional hearings in 1973, pharmaceutical industry officials acknowledged they were using prisoners for testing because they were cheaper than chimpanzees.
Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia made extensive use of inmates for medical experiments....
As the supply of prisoners and mental patients dried up, researchers looked to other countries. It made sense. Clinical trials could be done more cheaply and with fewer rules. And it was easy to find patients who were taking no medication, a factor that can complicate tests of other drugs....
U.S.-funded doctors failed to give the AIDS drug AZT to all the HIV-infected pregnant women in a study in Uganda even though it would have protected their newborns. U.S. health officials argued the study would answer questions about AZT's use in the developing world.
The other study, by Pfizer Inc., gave an antibiotic named Trovan to children with meningitis in Nigeria, although there were doubts about its effectiveness for that disease. Critics blamed the experiment for the deaths of 11 children and the disabling of scores of others. Pfizer settled a lawsuit with Nigerian officials for $75 million but admitted no wrongdoing.
http://www.aolnews.com/2011/02/27/horrific-us-medical-experiments-come-to-light/
"Many prominent researchers felt it was legitimate to experiment on people who did not have full rights in society - people like prisoners, mental patients, poor blacks. It was an attitude in some ways similar to that of Nazi doctors experimenting on Jews."
"In widely covered congressional hearings in 1973, pharmaceutical industry officials acknowledged they were using prisoners for testing because they were cheaper than chimpanzees."
Horrific US Medical Experiments Come to Light Feb 27, 2011 Mike Stobbe AP
ATLANTA -- Shocking as it may seem, U.S. government doctors once thought it was fine to experiment on disabled people and prison inmates. Such experiments included giving hepatitis to mental patients in Connecticut, squirting a pandemic flu virus up the noses of prisoners in Maryland, and injecting cancer cells into chronically ill people at a New York hospital.
Much of this horrific history is 40 to 80 years old, but it is the backdrop for a meeting in Washington this week by a presidential bioethics commission. The meeting was triggered by the government's apology last fall for federal doctors infecting prisoners and mental patients in Guatemala with syphilis 65 years ago.
U.S. officials also acknowledged there had been dozens of similar experiments in the United States - studies that often involved making healthy people sick.
An exhaustive review by The Associated Press of medical journal reports and decades-old press clippings found more than 40 such studies. At best, these were a search for lifesaving treatments; at worst, some amounted to curiosity-satisfying experiments that hurt people but provided no useful results....
In this June 25, 1945 photo, a doctor exposes a patient to malaria-carrying mosquitoes at Stateville Penitentiary in Crest Hill, Ill. A series of malaria studies at Stateville and two other prisons were designed to test antimalarial drugs that could have helped soldiers fighting in the Pacific during World War II....
Many prominent researchers felt it was legitimate to experiment on people who did not have full rights in society - people like prisoners, mental patients, poor blacks. It was an attitude in some ways similar to that of Nazi doctors experimenting on Jews.
....The AP review of past research found:
-A federally funded study begun in 1942 injected experimental flu vaccine in male patients at a state insane asylum in Ypsilanti, Mich., then exposed them to flu several months later. It was co-authored by Dr. Jonas Salk, who a decade later would become famous as inventor of the polio vaccine....
-In federally funded studies in the 1940s, noted researcher Dr. W. Paul Havens Jr. exposed men to hepatitis in a series of experiments, including one using patients from mental institutions in Middletown and Norwich, Conn. Havens, a World Health Organization expert on viral diseases, was one of the first scientists to differentiate types of hepatitis and their causes....
-Researchers in the mid-1940s studied the transmission of a deadly stomach bug by having young men swallow unfiltered stool suspension. The study was conducted at the New York State Vocational Institution, a reformatory prison in West Coxsackie....
-A University of Minnesota study in the late 1940s injected 11 public service employee volunteers with malaria, then starved them for five days. Some were also subjected to hard labor, and those men lost an average of 14 pounds. They were treated for malarial fevers with quinine sulfate....
-For a study in 1957, when the Asian flu pandemic was spreading, federal researchers sprayed the virus in the noses of 23 inmates at Patuxent prison in Jessup, Md., to compare their reactions to those of 32 virus-exposed inmates who had been given a new vaccine.
-Government researchers in the 1950s tried to infect about two dozen volunteering prison inmates with gonorrhea using two different methods in an experiment at a federal penitentiary in Atlanta. The bacteria was pumped directly into the urinary tract through the penis, according to their paper.
The men quickly developed the disease, but the researchers noted this method wasn't comparable to how men normally got infected - by having sex with an infected partner. The men were later treated with antibiotics....
in 1963. Researchers injected cancer cells into 19 old and debilitated patients at a Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital in the New York borough of Brooklyn to see if their bodies would reject them.
The hospital director said the patients were not told they were being injected with cancer cells because there was no need - the cells were deemed harmless....
At nearby Staten Island, from 1963 to 1966, a controversial medical study was conducted at the Willowbrook State School for children with mental retardation. The children were intentionally given hepatitis orally and by injection to see if they could then be cured with gamma globulin....
In widely covered congressional hearings in 1973, pharmaceutical industry officials acknowledged they were using prisoners for testing because they were cheaper than chimpanzees.
Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia made extensive use of inmates for medical experiments....
As the supply of prisoners and mental patients dried up, researchers looked to other countries. It made sense. Clinical trials could be done more cheaply and with fewer rules. And it was easy to find patients who were taking no medication, a factor that can complicate tests of other drugs....
U.S.-funded doctors failed to give the AIDS drug AZT to all the HIV-infected pregnant women in a study in Uganda even though it would have protected their newborns. U.S. health officials argued the study would answer questions about AZT's use in the developing world.
The other study, by Pfizer Inc., gave an antibiotic named Trovan to children with meningitis in Nigeria, although there were doubts about its effectiveness for that disease. Critics blamed the experiment for the deaths of 11 children and the disabling of scores of others. Pfizer settled a lawsuit with Nigerian officials for $75 million but admitted no wrongdoing.
http://www.aolnews.com/2011/02/27/horrific-us-medical-experiments-come-to-light/
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Another Runaway General: Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators
By Michael Hastings February 23, 2011 The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in "psychological operations" to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war, Rolling Stone has learned – and when an officer tried to stop the operation, he was railroaded by military investigators....
The orders came from the command of Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, a three-star general in charge of training Afghan troops – the linchpin of U.S. strategy in the war. Over a four-month period last year, a military cell devoted to what is known as "information operations" at Camp Eggers in Kabul was repeatedly pressured to target visiting senators and other VIPs who met with Caldwell. When the unit resisted the order, arguing that it violated U.S. laws prohibiting the use of propaganda against American citizens, it was subjected to a campaign of retaliation.
"My job in psy-ops is to play with people’s heads, to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave," says Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, the leader of the IO unit, who received an official reprimand after bucking orders. "I’m prohibited from doing that to our own people. When you ask me to try to use these skills on senators and congressman, you’re crossing a line."
The list of targeted visitors was long, according to interviews with members of the IO team and internal documents obtained by Rolling Stone. Those singled out in the campaign included senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Jack Reed, Al Franken and Carl Levin; Rep. Steve Israel of the House Appropriations Committee; Adm. Mike Mullen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Czech ambassador to Afghanistan; the German interior minister, and a host of influential think-tank analysts....
In a statement to Rolling Stone, a spokesman for Caldwell "categorically denies the assertion that the command used an Information Operations Cell to influence Distinguished Visitors."
....As for the operation targeting U.S. senators, there is no way to tell what, if any, influence it had on American policy. What is clear is that in January 2011, Caldwell’s command asked the Obama administration for another $2 billion to train an additional 70,000 Afghan troops – an initiative that will already cost U.S. taxpayers more than $11 billion this year. Among the biggest boosters in Washington to give Caldwell the additional money? Sen. Carl Levin, one of the senators whom Holmes had been ordered to target.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/another-runaway-general-army-deploys-psy-ops-on-u-s-senators-20110223
The orders came from the command of Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, a three-star general in charge of training Afghan troops – the linchpin of U.S. strategy in the war. Over a four-month period last year, a military cell devoted to what is known as "information operations" at Camp Eggers in Kabul was repeatedly pressured to target visiting senators and other VIPs who met with Caldwell. When the unit resisted the order, arguing that it violated U.S. laws prohibiting the use of propaganda against American citizens, it was subjected to a campaign of retaliation.
"My job in psy-ops is to play with people’s heads, to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave," says Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, the leader of the IO unit, who received an official reprimand after bucking orders. "I’m prohibited from doing that to our own people. When you ask me to try to use these skills on senators and congressman, you’re crossing a line."
The list of targeted visitors was long, according to interviews with members of the IO team and internal documents obtained by Rolling Stone. Those singled out in the campaign included senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Jack Reed, Al Franken and Carl Levin; Rep. Steve Israel of the House Appropriations Committee; Adm. Mike Mullen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Czech ambassador to Afghanistan; the German interior minister, and a host of influential think-tank analysts....
In a statement to Rolling Stone, a spokesman for Caldwell "categorically denies the assertion that the command used an Information Operations Cell to influence Distinguished Visitors."
....As for the operation targeting U.S. senators, there is no way to tell what, if any, influence it had on American policy. What is clear is that in January 2011, Caldwell’s command asked the Obama administration for another $2 billion to train an additional 70,000 Afghan troops – an initiative that will already cost U.S. taxpayers more than $11 billion this year. Among the biggest boosters in Washington to give Caldwell the additional money? Sen. Carl Levin, one of the senators whom Holmes had been ordered to target.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/another-runaway-general-army-deploys-psy-ops-on-u-s-senators-20110223
Thursday, February 24, 2011
The United States Truth and Reconciliation Commission (US TRC)
The United States Truth and Reconciliation Commission (US TRC)
seeks Truth and Reconciliation over historical and present-day extreme abuse and human rights violations including human experimentation, human trafficking, organized ritual crime, and other forms of torture committed in the US and/or by representatives of the US government.
Definitions of Trauma & Dissociation, Trafficking & Torture, Extreme Abuse & Ritual Abuse and Mind Control http://unitedstatestrc.com/faq/
seeks Truth and Reconciliation over historical and present-day extreme abuse and human rights violations including human experimentation, human trafficking, organized ritual crime, and other forms of torture committed in the US and/or by representatives of the US government.
Definitions of Trauma & Dissociation, Trafficking & Torture, Extreme Abuse & Ritual Abuse and Mind Control http://unitedstatestrc.com/faq/
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Charges initiated against Pope for crimes against humanity, PTSD-trauma link
also: Twin study may quiet doubts over PTSD-trauma link
Charges initiated against Pope for crimes against humanity
TWO GERMAN lawyers have initiated charges against Pope Benedict XVI at the International Criminal Court, alleging crimes against humanity. PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent The Irish Times - February 23, 2011
TWO GERMAN lawyers have initiated charges against Pope Benedict XVI at the International Criminal Court, alleging crimes against humanity. Christian Sailer and Gert-Joachim Hetzel, based at Marktheidenfeld in the Pope’s home state of Bavaria, last week submitted a 16,500-word document to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court at the Hague, Dr Luis Moreno Ocampo.
Their charges concern “three worldwide crimes which until now have not been denounced . . . (as) the traditional reverence toward ‘ecclesiastical authority’ has clouded the sense of right and wrong”.
They claim the Pope “is responsible for the preservation and leadership of a worldwide totalitarian regime of coercion which subjugates its members with terrifying and health-endangering threats”. They allege he is also responsible for “the adherence to a fatal forbiddance of the use of condoms, even when the danger of HIV-Aids infection exists” and for “the establishment and maintenance of a worldwide system of cover-up of the sexual crimes committed by Catholic priests and their preferential treatment, which aids and abets ever new crimes”. http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2011/0223/1224290630240.html
Criminal Charges against Dr. Joseph Ratzinger, Pope of the Roman Catholic Church on grounds of Crimes against Humanity According to Art. 7 ICC Statute
http://www.kanzlei-sailer.de/pope-lawsuit-2011.pdf
Twin study may quiet doubts over PTSD-trauma link
By Lynne Peeples NEW YORK Sep 30, 2010 NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Trauma really is the trigger of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, suggests a new study that could help settle an ongoing debate.
"It's been argued by some that PTSD is not a bona fide disorder, that these people are just maladjusted and the trauma doesn't have anything to with it," senior researcher Dr. Roger Pitman of Boston's Harvard University told Reuters Health....
Pitman and colleagues from Harvard and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs looked to 103 pairs of identical male twins from the Vietnam Era Twin Registry to test whether trauma truly causes PTSD, or if its sufferers would have developed symptoms of the disorder regardless. One brother from each pair had been exposed to combat in the Vietnam War; the other had not. Fifty of the combat-exposed men had PTSD.
The researchers found a substantial difference in mental disorders between the twins: Men exposed to combat and diagnosed with PTSD had three-fold more symptoms than their brothers, as well as compared to the combat veterans without PTSD and their co-twins. Similar patterns appeared when considering only PTSD-related psychiatric symptoms, report the researchers in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. According to Pitman, "If you assume that the identical twin is a representation of what the veteran would have been like had he not been exposed to combat, with the same genes and same family upbringing, then the conclusion is that psychiatric trauma causes substantial psychiatric symptoms in a portion of the population."
Given the similarities in symptoms between co-twins of combat-exposed brothers that did and did not develop PTSD, the findings also refute the presence of any predisposing genetic or environmental traits that increase vulnerability to trauma-induced PTSD, the authors say.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/09/30/us-twin-ptsd-idUSTRE68T47B20100930
Is Trauma a Causal Agent of Psychopathologic Symptoms in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder? Findings From Identical Twins Discordant for Combat Exposure
Mark W. Gilbertson, PhD; Alexander C. McFarlane, MD; Frank W. Weathers, PhD; Terence M. Keane, PhD; Rachel Yehuda, PhD; Arieh Y. Shalev, MD; Natasha B. Lasko, PhD; Jared M. Goetz, BA; and Roger K. Pitman, MD, for the Harvard/VA PTSD Twin Study Investigators
J Clin Psychiatry 2010;71(10):1324–1330
10.4088/JCP.10m06121blu
....Method: A case-control twin study conducted between 1996–2001 examined psychopathologic symptoms in a national convenience sample of 104 identical twin pairs discordant for combat exposure in Vietnam, with (n = 50) or without (n = 54) combat-related PTSD (DSM-IV–diagnosed) in the exposed twin....
Results: Combat veterans with PTSD demonstrated significantly higher scores (P < .0001) on the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised and other psychometric measures of psychopathology than their own combat-unexposed cotwins (and than combat veterans without PTSD and their cotwins).
Conclusions: These results support the conclusion that the majority of psychiatric symptoms reported by combat veterans with PTSD would not have been present were it not for their exposure to traumatic events.
http://article.psychiatrist.com/dao_1-login.asp?ID=10007050&RSID=75635130271135
Study on twins may quiet doubts on PTSD-trauma link
Researchers found major difference in mental disorders in twins if one had seen combat
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39441551/ns/health-mental_health/
Charges initiated against Pope for crimes against humanity
TWO GERMAN lawyers have initiated charges against Pope Benedict XVI at the International Criminal Court, alleging crimes against humanity. PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent The Irish Times - February 23, 2011
TWO GERMAN lawyers have initiated charges against Pope Benedict XVI at the International Criminal Court, alleging crimes against humanity. Christian Sailer and Gert-Joachim Hetzel, based at Marktheidenfeld in the Pope’s home state of Bavaria, last week submitted a 16,500-word document to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court at the Hague, Dr Luis Moreno Ocampo.
Their charges concern “three worldwide crimes which until now have not been denounced . . . (as) the traditional reverence toward ‘ecclesiastical authority’ has clouded the sense of right and wrong”.
They claim the Pope “is responsible for the preservation and leadership of a worldwide totalitarian regime of coercion which subjugates its members with terrifying and health-endangering threats”. They allege he is also responsible for “the adherence to a fatal forbiddance of the use of condoms, even when the danger of HIV-Aids infection exists” and for “the establishment and maintenance of a worldwide system of cover-up of the sexual crimes committed by Catholic priests and their preferential treatment, which aids and abets ever new crimes”. http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2011/0223/1224290630240.html
Criminal Charges against Dr. Joseph Ratzinger, Pope of the Roman Catholic Church on grounds of Crimes against Humanity According to Art. 7 ICC Statute
http://www.kanzlei-sailer.de/pope-lawsuit-2011.pdf
Twin study may quiet doubts over PTSD-trauma link
By Lynne Peeples NEW YORK Sep 30, 2010 NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Trauma really is the trigger of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, suggests a new study that could help settle an ongoing debate.
"It's been argued by some that PTSD is not a bona fide disorder, that these people are just maladjusted and the trauma doesn't have anything to with it," senior researcher Dr. Roger Pitman of Boston's Harvard University told Reuters Health....
Pitman and colleagues from Harvard and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs looked to 103 pairs of identical male twins from the Vietnam Era Twin Registry to test whether trauma truly causes PTSD, or if its sufferers would have developed symptoms of the disorder regardless. One brother from each pair had been exposed to combat in the Vietnam War; the other had not. Fifty of the combat-exposed men had PTSD.
The researchers found a substantial difference in mental disorders between the twins: Men exposed to combat and diagnosed with PTSD had three-fold more symptoms than their brothers, as well as compared to the combat veterans without PTSD and their co-twins. Similar patterns appeared when considering only PTSD-related psychiatric symptoms, report the researchers in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. According to Pitman, "If you assume that the identical twin is a representation of what the veteran would have been like had he not been exposed to combat, with the same genes and same family upbringing, then the conclusion is that psychiatric trauma causes substantial psychiatric symptoms in a portion of the population."
Given the similarities in symptoms between co-twins of combat-exposed brothers that did and did not develop PTSD, the findings also refute the presence of any predisposing genetic or environmental traits that increase vulnerability to trauma-induced PTSD, the authors say.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/09/30/us-twin-ptsd-idUSTRE68T47B20100930
Is Trauma a Causal Agent of Psychopathologic Symptoms in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder? Findings From Identical Twins Discordant for Combat Exposure
Mark W. Gilbertson, PhD; Alexander C. McFarlane, MD; Frank W. Weathers, PhD; Terence M. Keane, PhD; Rachel Yehuda, PhD; Arieh Y. Shalev, MD; Natasha B. Lasko, PhD; Jared M. Goetz, BA; and Roger K. Pitman, MD, for the Harvard/VA PTSD Twin Study Investigators
J Clin Psychiatry 2010;71(10):1324–1330
10.4088/JCP.10m06121blu
....Method: A case-control twin study conducted between 1996–2001 examined psychopathologic symptoms in a national convenience sample of 104 identical twin pairs discordant for combat exposure in Vietnam, with (n = 50) or without (n = 54) combat-related PTSD (DSM-IV–diagnosed) in the exposed twin....
Results: Combat veterans with PTSD demonstrated significantly higher scores (P < .0001) on the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised and other psychometric measures of psychopathology than their own combat-unexposed cotwins (and than combat veterans without PTSD and their cotwins).
Conclusions: These results support the conclusion that the majority of psychiatric symptoms reported by combat veterans with PTSD would not have been present were it not for their exposure to traumatic events.
http://article.psychiatrist.com/dao_1-login.asp?ID=10007050&RSID=75635130271135
Study on twins may quiet doubts on PTSD-trauma link
Researchers found major difference in mental disorders in twins if one had seen combat
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39441551/ns/health-mental_health/
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
ACLU Urges UN to Take Action on Solitary Confinement in the United States
ACLU Urges UN to Take Action on Solitary Confinement in the United States February 21, 2011 by Jean Casella and James Ridgeway
The American Civil Liberties Union last week filed a statement with the United Nations' Human Rights Council, urging it to to "address the widespread violations of the human rights of prisoners in the United States associated with solitary confinement and call for the adoption of appropriate measures to protect their human rights.
The ACLU calls on the Council to urge the United States to take concrete and appropriate measures to end the egregious violations stemming from solitary confinement of prisoners."
After providing background on the widespread use of solitary confinement in the United States today, the statement includes a concise and well-documented section titled "Harmful Effects of Solitary Confinement."...:
There is a broad consensus among mental health experts that long-term solitary confinement is psychologically harmful. Indeed, the damaging effects of solitary confinement, even on persons with no prior history of mental illness, have long been well known. http://solitarywatch.com/2011/02/21/aclu-urges-un-to-take-action-on-solitary-confinement-in-the-united-states/
The American Civil Liberties Union last week filed a statement with the United Nations' Human Rights Council, urging it to to "address the widespread violations of the human rights of prisoners in the United States associated with solitary confinement and call for the adoption of appropriate measures to protect their human rights.
The ACLU calls on the Council to urge the United States to take concrete and appropriate measures to end the egregious violations stemming from solitary confinement of prisoners."
After providing background on the widespread use of solitary confinement in the United States today, the statement includes a concise and well-documented section titled "Harmful Effects of Solitary Confinement."...:
There is a broad consensus among mental health experts that long-term solitary confinement is psychologically harmful. Indeed, the damaging effects of solitary confinement, even on persons with no prior history of mental illness, have long been well known. http://solitarywatch.com/2011/02/21/aclu-urges-un-to-take-action-on-solitary-confinement-in-the-united-states/
Monday, February 21, 2011
Archdiocese removes Monsignor Lynn
Archdiocese removes Monsignor Lynn By JULIE SHAW Philadelphia Daily News Feb. 20. 2011
The Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced today that Monsignor William Lynn - who was recently charged with child-endangerment offenses on allegations he covered up sexual abuse by other priests - was placed on administrative leave effective Friday.
Temporarily taking his place at St. Joseph Parish in Downingtown, Chester County, will be Monsignor Joseph McLoone, the pastor of St. Katharine Drexel Parish in Chester, Delaware County....
The Philadelphia District Attorney's Office on Feb. 10 released a scathing grand-jury report accusing Lynn of endangering children by shielding pedophile priests from detection and shuffling them into unsuspecting parishes. Prosecutors charged Lynn, 60, with two counts of child endangerment.
The grand jury, in its blistering report, also accused two priests, one former priest and a lay teacher of rape and related charges in connection with sexual offenses on two boys between 1996 and 2000. Charles Engelhardt, 64, and Edward Avery, 68, both priests; former priest James Brennan, 47; teacher Bernard Shero, 48; and Lynn were arrested the day the grand-jury report was released.
The arrests are believed to be the first time nationally that a high-ranking church official - Lynn - has been charged on allegations that he concealed priest sex-abuse.
The five accused men, who have posted bail, are scheduled for a preliminary hearing March 3 in Family Court. http://www.philly.com/philly/news/116568633.html
The Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced today that Monsignor William Lynn - who was recently charged with child-endangerment offenses on allegations he covered up sexual abuse by other priests - was placed on administrative leave effective Friday.
Temporarily taking his place at St. Joseph Parish in Downingtown, Chester County, will be Monsignor Joseph McLoone, the pastor of St. Katharine Drexel Parish in Chester, Delaware County....
The Philadelphia District Attorney's Office on Feb. 10 released a scathing grand-jury report accusing Lynn of endangering children by shielding pedophile priests from detection and shuffling them into unsuspecting parishes. Prosecutors charged Lynn, 60, with two counts of child endangerment.
The grand jury, in its blistering report, also accused two priests, one former priest and a lay teacher of rape and related charges in connection with sexual offenses on two boys between 1996 and 2000. Charles Engelhardt, 64, and Edward Avery, 68, both priests; former priest James Brennan, 47; teacher Bernard Shero, 48; and Lynn were arrested the day the grand-jury report was released.
The arrests are believed to be the first time nationally that a high-ranking church official - Lynn - has been charged on allegations that he concealed priest sex-abuse.
The five accused men, who have posted bail, are scheduled for a preliminary hearing March 3 in Family Court. http://www.philly.com/philly/news/116568633.html
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