"Once Drugs are Proven Safe they are generally no longer available to Indian Health Services"

We have discussed in class about the exploitation of many different racial communities; however, I feel that the article, "Natural Laboratories" truly shows the atrocities of the medical experimentation that was committed in Native Communities on United States Soil. The article begins with the words of a native woman stating, "They gave us vaccinations. Needles broke in some of the people's arms. They were not removed... Now our eyes are gone, our teeth are gone... This was forced on us. We had no choice." What makes this statement even more terrible is the fact that it was given on March 24, 1993. Prior to reading this article I had no idea that research was done to people in the United States in Native American communities to this extent.

I had always just assumed that vaccinations were perfect, harmless, and safe. I never stopped to think about how they were developed and what type of negative effects they could have on my body or the body of the humans in which they were developed. Through reading this article I have learned that while vaccines are often given credit for eradicating a disease, which is how scientists support their exploitation of individuals, in many instances, that the illness is already on a decline because of environmental factors. In fact, in 1985, the CDC or Center for Disease Control reported that the polio vaccine itself caused 87 % of the cases of polio in the U.S. between 1973 and 1983. Why then are these vaccines still being tested on human beings if they are not proven always effective? I think the question arises again over does the ends justify the means? Many of the Native American communities where the testing of these vaccinations are performed do not have the full information on vaccination programs before participating in them and they deserve to have the knowledge to make an informed decision, just like the women of Puerto Rico and all over the world have the right to obtain the knowledge to make informed decisions about sterilization and family planning. One trial program performed on Native Americans that I found to be the most shocking is as follows. A hepatitis trial vaccine program was established in South Dakota in 1991 and participating children were given an experimental hepatitis A vaccine, and the control group was given a hepatitis b vaccine. The use of vaccines was not the shocking instance of this case, but rather the fact that children were offered candy if they offered themselves up to be used a guinea pigs and parents were offered free diapers to sacrifice their children. How can candy or diapers be worth the life of ones child?

Native Americans are one of the poorest groups of people in the United and many cannot afford healthcare services. As a result they have a life expectancy 47 years. They are good enough to have vaccines tested on them left and right, and they are exploited nearly to the point of death, but once a drug has been proven "safe" on Native Americans, they are unable to afford it. This is just terrible and wrong and something really needs to be done. How can a group of people just be used and treated like lab rats and then once they are harmed, not even be given the drugs that they helped to prove safe and suffered in the process? Something is severely wrong with that picture and Native people need to be respected.