I am so amazingly pleased with my courses this semester. One in particular, an anthropology course called 'controlling processes,' is helping me take in the world around me in the way I really want to. I mean, it really will take my whole life to understand the world around me in the right way and trying to understand events and points of view critically and anylitically will take constant effort. I'm not nearly as proficient at analytically thinking about the world around me as I would like to be, but I like to think that I'm making strides to get there. This course, taught by the most brilliant person I've ever met, has helped open up the world for a more complete understanding.
More often than not, this means the world becomes a more and more ugly place, but I really really don't want to merely become cynical of the world. Cynicism does nothing to change things.
Today, we watched a documentary I would recommend all of you to see. It's called 'Direct Order' and it's about one of the military's latest waves of human experimentation done on its own American service members. In the past, our own American people, and military members more than others, have been the subjects of experimentation often without their own awareness and always without informed consent. During WWII and the Cold War, they were exposed to radiation, when the military leaders already knew that there were serious effects on humans from radiation, but they wanted to know just how much the radiation affected them. In the Vietnam war, US military members were exposed to toxic gases, such as agent orange, to test the effects on human subjects. A complete timeline of American human experimentation can be found here, which is a link I just found:
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/pages/experimentation.html'Direct Order' is about one of the most recent of these human experimentation cases, which is continuing even as I write this. During the first Gulf War, the experimentation began with testing anthrax vaccines on US service members. These men and women were ordered to take the vaccines, without any understanding of its effects or why they were to receive the shot (which is a direct violation of their American rights to informed consent). If they refused to take the shot, as we found out in the film, the men and women were either discharged 'dishonorably' from the service or, if they stuck with it, brought to be court marshalled, where the military court was sure to find them guilty, for not following direct orders, and fine them vast amounts of money (like $21,000) or put them in jail.
Around 600,000 men and women were injected with the vaccine, which was never approved by the FDA and was completely confidential (it did not even appear in their shot records). As of the time the film was created, sometime in the early 2000s, around 100,000 of these had SERIOUS side effects from the vaccine (bone marrow loss, respiration problems, antibody depletion, stomach paralysis among many). These men and women are dying from what the US goverment has labeled 'Gulf War Syndrome,' which they are trying to play off to the public as being an emotional disorder.
When these men and women went to hospitals, it was clear to them that these things they were suffering from were direct effects from the vaccines they were ordered to take. They came looking for support, only to be told that the military hospitals could do nothing for them as far as curing their illnesses, and that the effects they were feeling were NOT from the vaccines. When military leaders were asked about the vaccine, it was stated over and over that there were not serious side effects and that there was no direct evidence that linked the illnesses these American men and women were suffering to the anthrax vaccines--an outright lie. The military depended and took advantage of American citizens' belief that our own military would not hurt its own people. But it does. And without any qualms about doing it, it would seem.
The service men and women depicted in the film, who were themselves feeling the serious side effects of the anthrax vaccine, DYING from the effects of the anthrax vaccine, expressed their sense of betrayal for being prepared to give their lives for their country, only to become the guinea pigs in a project that was only instigated to show the raw power of the US military (how else can you explain the mindless, heartless, constant push to put their own people in danger?), an institution never questioned and only continually gaining more power.
And where is this depicted in our media? Where can we find these things so that we can blow the whistle on the injustices and uphold our own democracy? Where is our reference to the things we do to our own people when our leaders decry Suddam Husein cruelty for killing his own people? How can we 'bring democracy to the world' when we have the complete opposite situation on our own soil? How is it that more people don't know about this? How is it that I, the daughter of an Air Force pilot, am not aware if my own father is a part of this? I plan on asking him what he knows about it and if he himself is one of those guinea pigs. If he is, how could he go on believing that he must fight for his own country if he was forced to undertake something that has killed thousands of his own fellow Americans?
I'm so upset, my hands are shaking. I think I may write about this for my paper for the class. We're supposed to write on something that really angers us. I have found that there are so many things happening within our own borders that upsets me I've had trouble deciding which would make a better paper. This one hits home harder than anything else I've learned about recently, so I'm starting to think it's something I'd really like to address, and, ideally, eventually be able to make a difference about (am I naive enough to think so? I hope so, I really don't want to harden myself against the idea that I can't make a difference). I need to find out more. I'm thirsty to find out more and itching to try to find a way to change things so they fit my understanding of what America is supposed to be. I'm determined to make steps to getting rid of ignorance, with myself and among as many people as a can. Only then can I begin to make a difference for the good.
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sick
exhausted
giddy
anxious
tired
restless
relaxed
bouncy
blah
lazy
pensive
mellow
lethargic
indifferent
irritated