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Vera Sharav, a Holocaust survivor and human rights activist, is the founder of the Alliance for Human Research Protection [1] [2] and an outspoken critic of eugenics trends in the biomedical industry, particularly in matters of patient consent and children.
Sharav was born April 17, 1937 [3] in Romania as Vera Roll and survived the Holocaust as a child; her father did not survive. Her mother emigrated to the United States while she was cared for by relatives; she rejoined her mother in New York City when she was 8. She attended City College of New York and studied art history and after marriage and two children she went back to school, to the Pratt Institute, where in 1971 she received her master's in library science. [4]
Sharav became an activist against aspects of biomedical research after her teenage son died of a reaction to clozapine, which he had been prescribed for schizoaffective disorder. In her blog she criticizes the industry saying it is profit-driven, lies to its consumers and misleads people into participating in trials it pretends are medical treatment. Of particular interest to her are the waivers of informed consent issued by the Food and Drug Administration, which allow unconscious or incapacitated subjects to be tested. [4]
Her criticism of clinical studies where patient consent is questionable led her to campaign against Northfield Laboratories, manufacturers of the blood substitute PolyHeme; she filed complaints and started an email campaign which led the media and then the US Senate to investigate the matter. Sharav claimed the product was toxic and that the people and communities on which it was tested had not been properly informed of the risks. [4]
Sharav's methods are praised by some and criticized by others. Marcia Angell, former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine , senior lecturer at the Harvard Medical School, and industry critic praised her: "I see her as someone the research establishment badly needs". Arthur Caplan, professor of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania, is critical on some topics and says: "It's crazy to say you won't do the research if you can't get good informed consent when the alternative could be death". He agrees, though, that she is justified in trying to stop trials that involve children if the purpose is extending market rights. [4]
Other experiments that drew Sharav's ire involved the testing of HIV drugs on toddlers in the foster care system of New York City, and she "helped scuttle government research that would have paid low-income Florida families $970 to test their children’s exposure to household pesticides". [3]
Sharav held a speech at the 75th anniversary of the Nuremberg Code in Nuremberg, where she was critical of the COVID-19 vaccine comparing it to Zyklon B which was used to murder over a million people during the Holocaust. [5] [6] The German Jewish Forum for Democracy and against Antisemitism (JFDA) considers her speech a relativization of the Holocaust. [7]
The Nuremberg Code is a set of ethical research principles for human experimentation created by the court in U.S. v Brandt, one of the Subsequent Nuremberg trials that were held after the Second World War.
Informed consent is a principle in medical ethics and medical law and media studies, that a patient must have sufficient information and understanding before making decisions about their medical care. Pertinent information may include risks and benefits of treatments, alternative treatments, the patient's role in treatment, and their right to refuse treatment. In most systems, healthcare providers have a legal and ethical responsibility to ensure that a patient's consent is informed. This principle applies more broadly than healthcare intervention, for example to conduct research and to disclose a person's medical information.
The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male was a study conducted between 1932 and 1972 by the United States Public Health Service (PHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on a group of nearly 400 African American men with syphilis. The purpose of the study was to observe the effects of the disease when untreated, though by the end of the study medical advancements meant it was entirely treatable. The men were not informed of the nature of the experiment, and more than 100 died as a result.
Medical ethics is an applied branch of ethics which analyzes the practice of clinical medicine and related scientific research. Medical ethics is based on a set of values that professionals can refer to in the case of any confusion or conflict. These values include the respect for autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice. Such tenets may allow doctors, care providers, and families to create a treatment plan and work towards the same common goal. It is important to note that these four values are not ranked in order of importance or relevance and that they all encompass values pertaining to medical ethics. However, a conflict may arise leading to the need for hierarchy in an ethical system, such that some moral elements overrule others with the purpose of applying the best moral judgement to a difficult medical situation. Medical ethics is particularly relevant in decisions regarding involuntary treatment and involuntary commitment.
Clinical trials are prospective biomedical or behavioral research studies on human participants designed to answer specific questions about biomedical or behavioral interventions, including new treatments and known interventions that warrant further study and comparison. Clinical trials generate data on dosage, safety and efficacy. They are conducted only after they have received health authority/ethics committee approval in the country where approval of the therapy is sought. These authorities are responsible for vetting the risk/benefit ratio of the trial—their approval does not mean the therapy is 'safe' or effective, only that the trial may be conducted.
The Doctors' Trial was the first of 12 trials for war crimes of high-ranking German officials and industrialists that the United States authorities held in their occupation zone in Nuremberg, Germany, after the end of World War II. These trials were held before US military courts, not before the International Military Tribunal, but took place in the same rooms at the Palace of Justice. The trials are collectively known as the "subsequent Nuremberg trials", formally the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT).
Human subject research is systematic, scientific investigation that can be either interventional or observational and involves human beings as research subjects, commonly known as test subjects. Human subject research can be either medical (clinical) research or non-medical research. Systematic investigation incorporates both the collection and analysis of data in order to answer a specific question. Medical human subject research often involves analysis of biological specimens, epidemiological and behavioral studies and medical chart review studies. On the other hand, human subject research in the social sciences often involves surveys which consist of questions to a particular group of people. Survey methodology includes questionnaires, interviews, and focus groups.
Nazi eugenics refers to the social policies of eugenics in Nazi Germany, composed of various ideas about genetics. The racial ideology of Nazism placed the biological improvement of the German people by selective breeding of "Nordic" or "Aryan" traits at its center. These policies were used to justify the involuntary sterilization and mass-murder of those deemed "undesirable".
In health care, a clinical trial is a comparison test of a medication or other medical treatment, versus a placebo, other medications or devices, or the standard medical treatment for a patient's condition.
Nazi human experimentation was a series of medical experiments on prisoners by Nazi Germany in its concentration camps mainly between 1942 and 1945. There were 15,754 documented victims, of various nationalities and age groups, although the true number is believed to be more extensive. Many survived, with only a quarter of documented victims killed. Survivors generally experienced severe permanent injuries.
Human subject research legislation in the United States can be traced to the early 20th century. Human subject research in the United States was mostly unregulated until the 20th century, as it was throughout the world, until the establishment of various governmental and professional regulations and codes of ethics. Notable – and in some cases, notorious – human subject experiments performed in the US include the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, human radiation experiments, the Milgram obedience experiment and Stanford prison experiments and Project MKULTRA. With growing public awareness of such experimentation, and the evolution of professional ethical standards, such research became regulated by various legislation, most notably, those that introduced and then empowered the institutional review boards.
Various organizations have created guidelines for human subject research for various kinds of research involving human subjects and for various situations.
Madrigal v. Quilligan was a federal class action lawsuit from Los Angeles County, California, involving sterilization of Latina women that occurred either without informed consent, or through coercion. Although the judge ruled in favor of the doctors, the case led to better informed consent for patients, especially those who are not native English speakers.
Unethical human experimentation is human experimentation that violates the principles of medical ethics. Such practices have included denying patients the right to informed consent, using pseudoscientific frameworks such as race science, and torturing people under the guise of research. Around World War II, Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany carried out brutal experiments on prisoners and civilians through groups like Unit 731 or individuals like Josef Mengele; the Nuremberg Code was developed after the war in response to the Nazi experiments. Countries have carried out brutal experiments on marginalized populations. Examples include American abuses during Project MKUltra and the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, and the mistreatment of indigenous populations in Canada and Australia. The Declaration of Helsinki, developed by the World Medical Association (WMA), is widely regarded as the cornerstone document on human research ethics.
Sterilization law is the area of law, within reproductive rights, that gives a person the right to choose or refuse reproductive sterilization and governs when the government may limit this fundamental right. Sterilization law includes federal and state constitutional law, statutory law, administrative law, and common law. This article primarily focuses on laws concerning compulsory sterilization that have not been repealed or abrogated and are still good laws, in whole or in part, in each jurisdiction.
Del Matthew Bigtree is an American television and film producer who is the CEO of the anti-vaccination group Informed Consent Action Network. He produced the film Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe, based on the discredited opinions of Andrew Wakefield and alleges an unsubstantiated connection between vaccines and autism.
Dame Sarah Catherine Gilbert FRS is an English vaccinologist who is a Professor of Vaccinology at the University of Oxford and co-founder of Vaccitech. She specialises in the development of vaccines against influenza and emerging viral pathogens. She led the development and testing of the universal flu vaccine, which underwent clinical trials in 2011.
Katie Jane Ewer is a British immunologist and Professor of Vaccine Immunology at the University of Oxford's Jenner Institute.
Simone Melissa Gold is an American doctor and anti-vaccine activist. She is the founder of America's Frontline Doctors, a right-wing political organization known for spreading misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic. Before her arrest and guilty plea for participating in the 2021 United States Capitol attack, she had gained attention when a video of an America's Frontline Doctors press conference in front of the US Supreme Court Building went viral in July 2020. During the press conference, she touted the supposed benefits of hydroxychloroquine, despite evidence that it is ineffective as a COVID-19 treatment and can carry significant risks.
Eleanor Barnes is a British physician at the John Radcliffe Hospital and a Professor of Hepatology and Experimental Medicine at the University of Oxford. She has studied hepatitis C and the development of the development of HCV vaccines. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and serves as the lead for hepatology at the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Clinical Research Network.
one of the highlights that you might have seen being shared was a speech by a Holocaust survivor named Vera Sherav, in which she likened the COVID-19 response to the Final Solution and deemed it "the New Eugenics" in which this time "instead of Zyklon B gas, the weapons of mass destruction are genetically engineered injectable bioweapons masquerading as vaccines."
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