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How Human Experimentation Works · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
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Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot com. Sometimes science goes too far,
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Speaker 1: Dog Matters twisted but true. Wednesday's at ten on Science. Hey,
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Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Happy New
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Speaker 1: Year too. Huh. Yeah, that's Chuck Bryant, Charles W. Bryant,
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Speaker 1: baby here himself. Yeah, he's always chubby me No, baby
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Speaker 1: New Year Chuck. Yeah, with the ears. Yeah, poor kids.
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Speaker 1: He always has like kind of curly hair, which I'm
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Speaker 1: I'm not a com portion too. Yeah. You know, growing
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Speaker 1: up watching the little Claymation Happy New Year baby thing,
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Speaker 1: the baby New Year. Remember the Huge years. Oh, that's
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Speaker 1: so I was just talking about. That was like the
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Speaker 1: little stock claymation like Rudolph. Yeah, but there was one
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Speaker 1: for for New Year's and it was the baby that
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Speaker 1: had the huge ears. When he took his hat off,
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Speaker 1: his ears would pop out and everyone would chastise him.
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Speaker 1: What did it sound like when he took his ears
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Speaker 1: out like that? It sounded like actually, but always felt
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Speaker 1: bad because I thought it was a cute little claymation baby. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: it was that the crux of it that, like he
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Speaker 1: just had big ears and everybody laughed at him. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: I can't remember how it ented he finally found a
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Speaker 1: home or something. I don't know. You're good, because there's
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Speaker 1: nothing sadder than a homeless baby on New Year's yea
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Speaker 1: with big ears, Chuck, Josh, have you ever heard of Herophilus?
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Speaker 1: I have? You want to talk a bit about herofilus
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Speaker 1: journey back to fourth century BC, or as you like
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Speaker 1: to say, b c E the new BC. Um he
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Speaker 1: was that he's known as the father of anatomy. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: and one of the ways that he became known as
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Speaker 1: the father of anatomy was by um dissecting vivisecting live
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Speaker 1: human beings. Yes, live, well, I was about to say
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Speaker 1: live cald ever, But a cad ever is dead, live
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Speaker 1: human human patients dissecting for for science, right, and I
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Speaker 1: believe they were they were criminals right many times. Yes,
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Speaker 1: So we're talking about human experimentation. We're basing this on
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Speaker 1: an article written by the fine esteemed writer Robert Lamb
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Speaker 1: and he starts out paid zero with um. This account
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Speaker 1: of horofilis uh cutting through the eyeball of a guy
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Speaker 1: who was strapped to a table and I guess something
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Speaker 1: stuffed in his mouth to muffle the screams. But his
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Speaker 1: eyeball is being dissected in front of a group of
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Speaker 1: surgeons by Horaflis. Please once more, the master pots flesh
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Speaker 1: enters the bloody maze of otteries and muscle. You know,
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Speaker 1: we should have gotten r l in here to read
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Speaker 1: it himself. Good stuff. So yeah, um, apparently this guy
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Speaker 1: that um that that Robert's writing about, this victim was
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Speaker 1: one of more than six hundred that were vivisected at
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Speaker 1: the hands of Herophilis over the course of his lifetime, right, yes,
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Speaker 1: for alive prisoners. Yeah, so that's kind of sickening. It
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Speaker 1: is horrific, but it was apparently par for the course, right, yeah,
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Speaker 1: the time. Sure, So all these people, why would you
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Speaker 1: why would you dissect a live person or vivisect a
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Speaker 1: live person. I think it's dissect if it is dead,
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Speaker 1: and vivisect if they're alive, is it? I believe? So? Well,
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Speaker 1: I mean there's there's there's reasons for it. You wouldn't
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Speaker 1: want to justify it. But they were doing that because
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Speaker 1: sometimes you just need a human to perform an experiment
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Speaker 1: on and sometimes a kid ever didn't do the job.
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Speaker 1: And before they were scruples, they would, you know, do
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Speaker 1: it on a live person instead of like an animal
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Speaker 1: test right. Apparently back in horafulis is age. Also, they
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Speaker 1: thought that air was carried in the circulatory system rather
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Speaker 1: than blood, which is weird because if you vivisector person,
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Speaker 1: blood comes out, although I imagine air does too since
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Speaker 1: you can't see it. They're like, oh, let's air. This
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Speaker 1: is just something. And this guy's the father of anatomy.
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Speaker 1: He is. Come on, here's the big ironic twist. All
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Speaker 1: of his writings that he all the notes he took,
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Speaker 1: all the the scholarly works he created based on the
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Speaker 1: deaths or the intolerable pain experienced by these six people
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Speaker 1: were all lost when the Library of Alexandria burned in
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Speaker 1: uh to. This is rapidly devolving into a sound effect show. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: it's so um should we tell people what that is?
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Speaker 1: Jerry got us a little gift for Christmas, a little
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Speaker 1: uh sound machine, And the funny thing is that she
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Speaker 1: asked us to keep it on the d L and
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Speaker 1: we just told a hundred thousand people. Yeah. Yeah. The
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Speaker 1: other funny thing, and so she actually said we could
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Speaker 1: use it. I thought she was gonna say, well, here,
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Speaker 1: but you can never use this, right, Yeah, and she
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Speaker 1: encouraged us to use it as well. So chuck. The
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Speaker 1: idea of somebody writhing under the knife while a guy
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Speaker 1: like Corophilis or anybody else with a sharp sharp object
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Speaker 1: cuts his eyeball open to examine the nerves inside. Uh,
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Speaker 1: is a pretty horrific idea, indeed, Um. And the problem
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Speaker 1: is is this kind of thing didn't end in a
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Speaker 1: d two seventy two. Now it continued on. Apparently history
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Speaker 1: is littered with human experimentation. Yes, so much so that
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Speaker 1: there were body snatching problems in the nineteenth century because
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Speaker 1: medical schools needed bodies, right they You couldn't in the
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Speaker 1: nineteenth century. By the nineteenth century, you couldn't vivisect anybody
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Speaker 1: you weren't supposed to. And also because of the puritanical ideals, Um,
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Speaker 1: you couldn't do any kind of um dissection on cadavers.
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Speaker 1: Right now, of course you can, right, which is a
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Speaker 1: good move, because, like you said, there was a lot
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Speaker 1: of grave robbing going on to supply the medical schools
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Speaker 1: who still needed this knowledge. Um. And wanted, and we're
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Speaker 1: willing to pay grave robbers for it. Time. Do you
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Speaker 1: remember back in ninety nine when they found some bones,
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Speaker 1: actually hundred bones in the basement of Medical College of Georgia. Really, yeah,
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Speaker 1: I did not know that. Yeah, they were they dated
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Speaker 1: back to the nineteenth century, and they were linked to
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Speaker 1: um rob graves. Yeah. That's crazy, isn't it? It is
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Speaker 1: so well, you know, that's if you're dealing with kidavers
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Speaker 1: if you're there. Also, if you wanted to experiment on
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Speaker 1: a live um living thing, then you would now have
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Speaker 1: to go the route of like chimps and rabbits and
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Speaker 1: mice rats, right, which actually, what we've done, from what
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Speaker 1: I understand, is with human experimentation, we've put lower making
6:46
Speaker 1: air quotes here, lower species in between us and initial discovery. Right. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: The problem was back in the day though, they did
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Speaker 1: the same thing, but they considered lower species other humans
6:57
Speaker 1: specifically convicts, yeah, or poor are in destitute, diseased, Yeah exactly,
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Speaker 1: but convicts for sure, convicts have pretty much always gotten
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Speaker 1: it pretty bad, um as far as human experimentation goes.
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Speaker 1: But yeah, um, so these days we we do put
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Speaker 1: h rabbits and rats and and um, chimps and macaques
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Speaker 1: and in between us and um, you know, not knowing
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Speaker 1: what a drug will do or something like that. But really,
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Speaker 1: ultimately it still ends up to humans. And one of
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Speaker 1: the reasons why is because you know, you can't you
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Speaker 1: they we don't even know whether or not animals experience happiness,
7:34
Speaker 1: you know, do they How can we figure out if
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Speaker 1: they're hallucinating? Yeah? Sure, they can't help self report. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: you gotta ask questions every now and then. Right, and
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Speaker 1: then also, I mean, if you're doing if you're making
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Speaker 1: a drug for humans, you eventually have to find out
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Speaker 1: exactly what it does to humans. It's not gonna have
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Speaker 1: the same effect on a rat, although it will probably
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Speaker 1: be close. And what we'll get into that in a minute.
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Speaker 1: All right, should we talk about some of the horrific
7:57
Speaker 1: things that have happened throughout our history? Judge, Well, don't
7:59
Speaker 1: forget the whole him. There's another there's another route you
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Speaker 1: could take it self experimentation, Yes, living your living self,
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Speaker 1: experimenting on yourself, which I mean there have been some
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Speaker 1: famous examples of this. Yes. Famously, Pierre and Mary Curie
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Speaker 1: earned a Nobel Prize in Physics from radiation research, and
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Speaker 1: they did this pie taping radium salts to their skin
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Speaker 1: and seeing what happened. So that's one way to do it.
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Speaker 1: Another guy who famously tried his his research out on
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Speaker 1: himself as Albert Hoffman, the guy who created LSD, right,
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Speaker 1: and apparently he had a diary where he writes about
8:38
Speaker 1: his bike ride home after injecting himself with LSD and
8:40
Speaker 1: he had no bike. No, he had a bike, but
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Speaker 1: he was like, Wow, nothing is real And I really
8:48
Speaker 1: feel like listening to pink Floyd right now. Yeah, yet
8:51
Speaker 1: to be discovered, pink Floyd yet to be born. I
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Speaker 1: think even um so Chuck self experimentation has its own flaws, right,
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Speaker 1: if you're vivisecting an eyeball and you do it to yourself,
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Speaker 1: you can't do that more than once. You probably wouldn't
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Speaker 1: even do it that one time, yea. So really there
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Speaker 1: is a lot to be gained from vivisecting human beings. Well,
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Speaker 1: we don't do it. And one of the reasons why
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Speaker 1: is because it's horrific. So yes, let's talk about some
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Speaker 1: of the horrific human experiments that litter history. Jay Mary
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Speaker 1: and Simms. Is that name? Ringabelle No? That is uh
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Speaker 1: considered to be the father of gynecology. Oh yeah, Jay
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Speaker 1: Mary and Sims, Sims and uh. He even became the
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Speaker 1: president of the A M A and eighteen seventy six.
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Speaker 1: But he developed um experimental surgeries by testing them on
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Speaker 1: African slaves many times without anesthesia. Yeah, dark side for sure, man. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: I would definitely call that a dark side. Yeah. He
9:53
Speaker 1: gets lauded probably in many circles still today he does. Um. Apparently,
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Speaker 1: Uh that was we think of the Nazis especially, and
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Speaker 1: we'll talk about them in a minute. But the US
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Speaker 1: has a really shady history of human experimentation. Um. A
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Speaker 1: guy named Dr Leo Stanley Uh injected prisoners at San
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Speaker 1: Quentin with animal testinges too uh slow or reverse aging,
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Speaker 1: which did not work out. Um, Cholerado experiments on the
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Speaker 1: Philippines conducted by US nineteen fifteen, Palagra experiments in Mississippi, right. Uh.
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Speaker 1: And then apparently we were talking about how prisoners have
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Speaker 1: always gotten a bad rap up. Until the nineteen seventies
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Speaker 1: in the United States, pretty much all pharmaceuticals were tested
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Speaker 1: on convicts. You did not want to break a law. Now,
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Speaker 1: I wonder you know how people hearken back to like
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Speaker 1: the the Golden Age when there was less crime and
10:50
Speaker 1: less violence and all that. I wonder how much of
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Speaker 1: it had to do with the fact that if you
10:54
Speaker 1: went to prison, like you would be experimented on. Yeah,
10:57
Speaker 1: I wonder if you know that, though it probably wasn't
10:59
Speaker 1: why they reported. Until you get to prison. Then you're like,
11:02
Speaker 1: oh oops, yeah that's yeah. Had I known, right, but
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Speaker 1: I imagine recitativism rates what what's a bone head word?
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Speaker 1: We're pretty low. Yeah, you're probably right, so chuck. You know. Also,
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Speaker 1: the United States was huge into compulsory sterilization, right, I
11:18
Speaker 1: did not know that the eugenics movement. Okay, so between
11:22
Speaker 1: I guess the early nineteen hundreds, the first decade of
11:25
Speaker 1: the twentieth century up until the seventies, I think maybe
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Speaker 1: the ninety one, uh sixty four thousand people in the
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Speaker 1: United States were sterilized against their will, like epileptics, the
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Speaker 1: mentally handicapped, blind, deaf, mutes, um schizophrenics, and Native Americans
11:46
Speaker 1: against their will, sometimes unknowingly unbelievable. Yeah, which you could.
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Speaker 1: That's not necessarily an experiment because you know exactly what's
11:53
Speaker 1: gonna happen. The prison is going to be sterilized. But um,
11:57
Speaker 1: if you look at it as eugenics, it's it is
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Speaker 1: kind of larger experiment to basically created great race and
12:03
Speaker 1: then the eugenics the popularity. I mean it was well
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Speaker 1: known this was going on. This was in a secret
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Speaker 1: government program like mk ultra, right, and there was public
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Speaker 1: support for it until World War Two, which remember actually
12:16
Speaker 1: can you remember to the future, Yes, when we talk
12:19
Speaker 1: about mercenaries, right, World War Two changed everything we did. Yeah,
12:23
Speaker 1: the Nazis really lead the way when it comes to
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Speaker 1: human experimentation. Um, as everyone knows against the Jews, Gypsies,
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Speaker 1: anyone they felt like targeting. They would do things like
12:33
Speaker 1: freezing them to research hypothermia and then actually came it
12:37
Speaker 1: became huge later their hypothermia research is like really used
12:42
Speaker 1: still yeah, well we'll get into the ethics. Uh. They
12:46
Speaker 1: put them in the compression chambers to test the effects
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Speaker 1: of high altitude flight, which it doesn't get much worse
12:51
Speaker 1: than that, and a sterilization experiments as well, like the
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Speaker 1: US was doing. They would use a phosphorus incendiary phosphorus
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Speaker 1: devices to figure out how to treat phosphorus burns. Japan
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Speaker 1: was another country. Their Unit seven thirty one very famous
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Speaker 1: unit reportedly killed more than ten thousand Chinese, Korean, and
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Speaker 1: Russian POWs to develop biological weapons and tests of stuff
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Speaker 1: out on them basically, right. Um. So the Nazis in
13:17
Speaker 1: particular face the music at Nuremberg, right um. And there
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Speaker 1: was this part to the Nuremberg trials called the Doctor's trials. Uh.
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Speaker 1: And I think a bunch of the guys, like seventeen
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Speaker 1: were convicted, and most of them I think were hanged. Yeah, um.
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Speaker 1: And a lot of these guys cases were Dude, we
13:37
Speaker 1: didn't break any laws. There's no lawful outline of what
13:41
Speaker 1: to do when you're experimenting on a human, and a
13:44
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff followed the same kind of protocol
13:47
Speaker 1: that we had before the war, right right, which is
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Speaker 1: just horrendous, but in a lot of cases it was
13:53
Speaker 1: actually true. Right. So one of the results of the
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Speaker 1: Nuremberg Trial was the Nuremberg Code, where the international community said,
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Speaker 1: all right, we need to outline some some guidelines for
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Speaker 1: human experimentation. And if I think there's like ten points
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Speaker 1: to it, ten large overviews UH to human experimentation guidelines,
14:14
Speaker 1: and it focuses on UM reducing UH, fear and pain
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Speaker 1: discomfort in the experiment. Subjects that can't be coerced, that
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Speaker 1: has to be willing, that have to be informed. What's
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Speaker 1: this covered by? What's that under? You know, like what
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Speaker 1: document or organization that's under I don't know, probably the
14:33
Speaker 1: u WIN. I would think the u N would have
14:35
Speaker 1: something to do with that. But yes, but it's very
14:37
Speaker 1: famous called the Nuremberg Code, right, and it solves like
14:41
Speaker 1: the moral quandary uh jevercy Um extreme measures, Gene Hackman,
14:46
Speaker 1: Hugh Grant, all right, so you know, like in the end,
14:48
Speaker 1: I think they're in a sewer somehow. Gene Hackman's like,
14:51
Speaker 1: if you had to kill one to save a million,
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Speaker 1: wouldn't you have to do it? And so the Nuremberg
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Speaker 1: Code solves that. And the answer, by the way, is no,
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Speaker 1: you wouldn't kill one. Yeah, that's the old, the age
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Speaker 1: old question, though, right, kill one to save many, which
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Speaker 1: is a very utilitarian view of of looking at things like, yes,
15:07
Speaker 1: you kill one person to save a million, of course
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Speaker 1: you do, but we as an international collective have decided
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Speaker 1: that you don't do that. One person's life is worth
15:17
Speaker 1: as much as a million people's potential lives. So that
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Speaker 1: brings us to The real quandary that with human experimentation
15:23
Speaker 1: is what do you do with this information that has
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Speaker 1: gained from these awful, awful experiments. Um. A lot of
15:32
Speaker 1: detractors will say that to use this information supports human experimentation, right,
15:37
Speaker 1: But then another way of looking at it is to
15:39
Speaker 1: propose like kind of do a thought experiment of all right,
15:42
Speaker 1: let's say that you are you walk in on one
15:45
Speaker 1: of these experiments. You say, your death is inevitable and
15:48
Speaker 1: it's going to be a painful, horrible death. But you
15:51
Speaker 1: can choose whether or not this data that was that
15:54
Speaker 1: your results from your death is suppressed or used. Which
15:58
Speaker 1: one do you want? And then you know that most
16:01
Speaker 1: people would say, well, if I'm going to die anyway,
16:04
Speaker 1: I would want this data to be used. That's the
16:06
Speaker 1: argument the other side uses, Yeah, the US cut a
16:08
Speaker 1: little deal though with you one. I know we were
16:12
Speaker 1: it's such we have such a shady history, like we
16:15
Speaker 1: used Nazi scientists to get us to the moon. Well,
16:17
Speaker 1: this was particularly to keep it from falling into the
16:19
Speaker 1: wrong hands. So we thought, hey, rather than give that
16:22
Speaker 1: to the Russians Une, let's cut a deal where the
16:26
Speaker 1: officers responsible for this good immunity from prosecution and war crimes,
16:31
Speaker 1: and we get the data, and we'll even give you
16:33
Speaker 1: a little stipend. Yeah, on the side, we'll give you
16:36
Speaker 1: some money probably way to come up with those biological weapons.
16:40
Speaker 1: Nicely done. Um, Like we said, the Nazi hypothermia experiments,
16:44
Speaker 1: which were pretty brutal apparently, um the they would put
16:49
Speaker 1: you in an icy vat of water with a thermometer
16:53
Speaker 1: in erectum and they found that most people died, went
16:57
Speaker 1: unconscious and died around when their body temperature seventy degrees fahrenheit. Right, yeah,
17:02
Speaker 1: it's it's such a useful information. But no, the useful
17:04
Speaker 1: information came in they were looking for ways to revive
17:07
Speaker 1: people suffering from hypothermia because the Germans were losing so
17:10
Speaker 1: many people on the Eastern Front in Germany. Um that
17:15
Speaker 1: they actually did figure out ways of quickly reviving people
17:19
Speaker 1: suffering from hypothermia. So hypotherp post war hypothermia researchers are like, dude,
17:24
Speaker 1: these people, as ghastly as these experiments are, they figured
17:28
Speaker 1: out how to revive people suffering from hypothermia. We need
17:31
Speaker 1: that information. So I think with with that, UM, I
17:35
Speaker 1: guess that group leading the charge Nazi data has been
17:40
Speaker 1: used in a lot of ways, but then there it
17:42
Speaker 1: should be cited, I think was the compromise that they
17:45
Speaker 1: came up with. Yeah, and it actually worked the other
17:47
Speaker 1: way to Jewish doctors would later study um victims of
17:52
Speaker 1: starvation in the ghetto and the word slaw ghetto and
17:55
Speaker 1: they use that to aid in the study of UM
17:58
Speaker 1: hunger associated disease. So they found a way to use
18:02
Speaker 1: it at least. And so we were talking also about
18:06
Speaker 1: how the US has a nice long history of horrible
18:09
Speaker 1: stuff like the Tuskegee experiments. You want to talk about that. Yes,
18:14
Speaker 1: a forty year study of a syphilis began in nineteen
18:17
Speaker 1: thirty two, and they use African Americans who sought treatment
18:22
Speaker 1: for this disease, and they basically straight up lied and
18:25
Speaker 1: deceived them thinking they were being treated. Right. They they
18:28
Speaker 1: actually didn't use any kind of medical intervention because they
18:31
Speaker 1: wanted to watch the progression of syphilis. Yeah, they want
18:33
Speaker 1: to see it gets worse, and so they could chart
18:36
Speaker 1: everything out and they had no idea. And then I
18:38
Speaker 1: guess finally in uh No, the US issues a public
18:44
Speaker 1: apology for for this and there's still some people alive
18:49
Speaker 1: who were experimented on unbelievable. Yeah, and you know, we've
18:52
Speaker 1: we've documented the LSD experiments that unsuspecting Americans were dosed
18:57
Speaker 1: and the mk Ultra project. We did a whole show
19:01
Speaker 1: on that. Didn't me Yeah, it was like our best one,
19:06
Speaker 1: didn't we did you forget? Well it was a long
19:08
Speaker 1: time ago, so yeah, well you were kind of out
19:10
Speaker 1: of it if you remember. The beginning of that one
19:12
Speaker 1: was oh, that's right. Yeah, we did a role playing
19:15
Speaker 1: so Chuck. There was kind of a huge sea change
19:19
Speaker 1: in the way that human experimentation was looked at and
19:22
Speaker 1: carried out when the f d A was established in
19:25
Speaker 1: the thirties. All of a sudden, there were review boards
19:28
Speaker 1: and panels. Um, the universities kind of stepped in and said,
19:33
Speaker 1: all right, we play a big role in this. We're
19:35
Speaker 1: gonna start establishing stricter oversight of human experimentation. And that's
19:40
Speaker 1: kind of the course that we've followed since then. Right,
19:42
Speaker 1: drug trials, drug trials exactly? Do you know any human
19:45
Speaker 1: guinea pigs? Now I've never done it, but um, you know,
19:49
Speaker 1: phase one drug trials is usually where you'll get the
19:52
Speaker 1: most folks, because you need healthy, healthy individuals who are
19:55
Speaker 1: willing to risk their health for money and basically what
19:58
Speaker 1: they're doing in these phase one trial or you know
20:01
Speaker 1: when you see these commercials that rattle off a hundred
20:03
Speaker 1: side effects, they're positively frightening. They get these from giving
20:08
Speaker 1: these uh these medications to people and seeing what happens. Basically, Yeah,
20:12
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb put it really well. He said that if
20:14
Speaker 1: your bottle of medication says that it might result in
20:16
Speaker 1: bowl bowel control problems or suicidal thoughts, you can bet
20:20
Speaker 1: that someone received a paycheck for experiencing them at some
20:23
Speaker 1: point exactly. So that's what they know. So that's phase one.
20:27
Speaker 1: Phase two deals with dosing and efficiency, and phase three
20:31
Speaker 1: enlist um actual patients who need this treatment, not not
20:36
Speaker 1: healthy people, and people who volunteer for phase one clinical
20:39
Speaker 1: trials are uh handsomely paid depending on the risk involves.
20:44
Speaker 1: That's one of the problems. Yeah, And I mean it's
20:47
Speaker 1: kind of like a vacation. You're you're fed, and you're
20:50
Speaker 1: put up maybe in a hotel or the hospital room
20:52
Speaker 1: has um like a video game console, you watch movies
20:55
Speaker 1: or whatever, and they just shoot you full of something
20:58
Speaker 1: and then come in like every fifteen minutes or hour
21:01
Speaker 1: whatever and say, you know, like have you seen that
21:04
Speaker 1: leopard can you were talking to earlier again, you know,
21:07
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. But that's one of the problems
21:08
Speaker 1: is that some of these folks bounced from experiment to
21:11
Speaker 1: experiment and you know, kind of make a half asked
21:15
Speaker 1: living off of this, right, I guess you can. I mean,
21:18
Speaker 1: especially if you're dedicated. He talks about Lamb talks about
21:21
Speaker 1: a an article in The New Yorker that is about
21:25
Speaker 1: it's called guinea pigging, I believe, and it's about this
21:28
Speaker 1: soap culture of clinical drug trial participants who have their
21:32
Speaker 1: own like publications that show like who's what upcoming drug
21:36
Speaker 1: trials are, are are in the pipeline and how much
21:39
Speaker 1: they're gonna pay and that kind of stuff. So there's
21:42
Speaker 1: a concern that, like, yeah, these people are kind of
21:46
Speaker 1: hooked on this lifestyle. My thing is is like to
21:50
Speaker 1: each his own, sure, you know, yeah, I mean, if
21:52
Speaker 1: they're if there are no laws being broken and they're
21:54
Speaker 1: getting paid and they're willing to do this instead of
21:57
Speaker 1: going to get a chop delivering pizzas, then you know, frankly,
22:02
Speaker 1: if they can get my pizza to me and stay safe,
22:06
Speaker 1: not harm other people, and deliver a delicious pizza. Still
22:09
Speaker 1: I don't care if they're in the midst of a
22:10
Speaker 1: drug trial. Right. Then, here's another thing I didn't know
22:13
Speaker 1: that I thought was interesting in this article is that
22:16
Speaker 1: they kind of put the pedal to the metal when
22:18
Speaker 1: it comes to these trials because a US drug patent
22:21
Speaker 1: only last for twenty years, and so if you're hung
22:23
Speaker 1: up for a decade and research and testing, which can happen,
22:27
Speaker 1: then that they don't start it over once you get
22:29
Speaker 1: it approved. You've got only ten years left to make
22:33
Speaker 1: you know, serious money, and they speed these things along.
22:36
Speaker 1: They do. Now, if you're running it through university, they
22:39
Speaker 1: generally have well, universities have a reputation for being total
22:44
Speaker 1: sticklers when it comes to um institutional review boards, right um.
22:49
Speaker 1: So as a result, I think that a lot of
22:52
Speaker 1: drug companies have found that if you run it instead
22:54
Speaker 1: through a private organization that does the clinical trials for you,
22:58
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, you can walk around
22:59
Speaker 1: all out of these ethical guidelines or you know, safe
23:02
Speaker 1: conditions and yet again outsourcing to private contractors for money.
23:07
Speaker 1: It's uh, just it's the way to get around things exactly.
23:15
Speaker 1: So that's medical experimentation. There's a this is a really
23:18
Speaker 1: cool article. It's slightly outside of the how Stuff Works voice.
23:22
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb put his all in all into it. He
23:25
Speaker 1: put his Lamb stamp on it. He did at the
23:27
Speaker 1: very least. You gotta read paid zero, and I defy
23:29
Speaker 1: you to just repaid zero. For those of you out there,
23:32
Speaker 1: a page zero is really page one. We just that's
23:34
Speaker 1: the insider lingo here and we still Chuck and I
23:36
Speaker 1: have worked here for more than two years and we've
23:38
Speaker 1: still never figured out why they call it paid zero.
23:42
Speaker 1: So if you want to read paid zero of how
23:45
Speaker 1: Human Experimentation Works, you can type in human experimentation in
23:49
Speaker 1: the handy search bar at how stuff Works dot com.
23:52
Speaker 1: And I guess you could say that that leads us
23:54
Speaker 1: to listener. May. Yes, Josh, this is about in our
24:00
Speaker 1: Co States. I remember Narco States. I'm gonna call it
24:03
Speaker 1: a Narco state email. Uh, this is from Christer who
24:08
Speaker 1: Actually you had to write Christer back and say are
24:10
Speaker 1: you're a boy or a girl because I've never heard
24:12
Speaker 1: that name? And Christos a dude. So Christo says I
24:16
Speaker 1: currently live in Wires, Mexico. What yeah, exactly, because we
24:21
Speaker 1: covered wires pretty thoroughly. Yeah, it is sad to stand
24:24
Speaker 1: out as a dangerous narco zone rather than being recognized
24:26
Speaker 1: for a decent achievement. Uh, but things here are indeed
24:30
Speaker 1: pretty crazy. Murders are super high, and I've tragically lost
24:33
Speaker 1: some friends throughout the year. As if this wasn't enough,
24:36
Speaker 1: even the government is messing with us, as I had
24:39
Speaker 1: an experience last July my parents happened on a clothing shop.
24:43
Speaker 1: We were asked by some federal agents to give out
24:45
Speaker 1: a big amount of money two d and fifty thousand
24:48
Speaker 1: U S. Dollars just because, of course, my family refused
24:52
Speaker 1: to do so. A week later, they came with an
24:54
Speaker 1: order to close and empty my parents shop and locked
24:57
Speaker 1: up my dad. We gave a smaller amount just so
24:59
Speaker 1: he was released and we thought it would just in there.
25:01
Speaker 1: But to our surprise, a month later, we were surrounded
25:04
Speaker 1: by about twenty agents holding an apprehension order to take
25:07
Speaker 1: both of my parents, charging them for supposedly commercializing priate
25:11
Speaker 1: of clothing, which was a trump up charged I know.
25:15
Speaker 1: I was left alone with my three younger brothers for
25:17
Speaker 1: more than three months until the agent on top agreed
25:20
Speaker 1: to let them out of prison for fifty dollars and
25:23
Speaker 1: the case was closed. The sick experience, and thank god
25:26
Speaker 1: it was finally over. Throughout those three months of grief,
25:29
Speaker 1: you guys were right there with me, and you were
25:31
Speaker 1: a nice distraction from my awful situation at a time
25:35
Speaker 1: that was clearly troubling, and I want to thank you
25:37
Speaker 1: for that. It was probably doesn't mean the same to
25:40
Speaker 1: you guys, but it was helpful in some way for me.
25:42
Speaker 1: I no longer want to live in this place, and
25:44
Speaker 1: I'm just looking forward to moving to the US as
25:47
Speaker 1: soon as possible, I know. Uh. So we just wanted
25:50
Speaker 1: to share this and say Merry Christmas. So um, we
25:53
Speaker 1: had some angry people right in by the way about me,
25:56
Speaker 1: saying we should just drop the borders and let anyone in.
25:59
Speaker 1: And I just want to say to those folks, think
26:01
Speaker 1: about people like Krister here who are just dying to
26:04
Speaker 1: get to the United States because of of stuff like this,
26:07
Speaker 1: and the US represents, you know, something, something great to them,
26:11
Speaker 1: and uh, we shouldn't forget that. So that this I'm
26:14
Speaker 1: on my high hearts and now I'm getting off of it.
26:16
Speaker 1: Thanks ju. Do we have a horse effect? Now, let's see,
26:20
Speaker 1: we've got something close to it. And that would be
26:29
Speaker 1: weird if you have an email about escaping certain death,
26:34
Speaker 1: being extorted by the Mexican military, or any kind of
26:38
Speaker 1: unjust um story, right true. Yeah, you can send it
26:43
Speaker 1: in an email to stuff podcast at Wait. Happy New Year, everybody, Yeah,
26:49
Speaker 1: Happy New Year. Be safe. Christoper, We're glad you're alive. Yes,
26:53
Speaker 1: we're glad. Everybody who made it through two thousand and
26:55
Speaker 1: nine made it through two thousand nine. Act how stuff
26:59
Speaker 1: works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
27:16
Speaker 1: other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Want more
27:20
Speaker 1: how stuff works, check out our blogs on the house.
27:23
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