Does every person own themselves? - Page 2

Rights? Own oneself? Only the government is accountable when it comes to rights. (In theory!!).

The Bill of Rights does not apply in the workplace however. For some people, the workplace, ie the power of who controls the workplace, extends into the homes of employees, in their own time, and their own out-of working-hours lives, as regards certain rights, or the lack thereof.

Considering the fact that most people spend most of their waking hours in the workplace where there is no democratic process, if one is a mere "employee"... (unless the workplace is a worker owned cooperative), then it is quite safe to say that here in the US, we only partially own ourselves... for all practical considerations.

Of course we still are in control of what we think during working hours. However, if biotechnology was developed that enabled the spying on a person's thoughts, one would wonder whether our corporate (or public sector) employers would allow the privacy of those thoughts to remain private, or whether they would abuse this power and lord it over us all to an even greater extent.

Yes we do but what that means, to me at least, is that we learn what we are, foremost, not take anybody else's version of what we are or are capable of over our own experience.

As citizens, wasn't it the Romans who got the owning by the power that be over the populus fine tuned? I'm not sure myself, but I think they pushed a more legal framework over people than had been the case in many areas.

One thing not forget here is that we "own" only in a very loose sense of the term. If I own a tree and cut it down and build a house and put wood in the stove, that tree no longer exists. There's smoke there's a house that will rot and nourish the soil. Everything changes.

Given it's mj1970 starting this thread and wanting government to get out of the way of business, let's also not forget that businesses have almost zero respect for tribal peoples rights, go figure.

You want people and businesses to have these rights but with their power they take other peoples rights away to make a buck. It's so transparent, it's absurd.

The worlds littered with fine examples. You're connected to the web right?

Businesses are both good and bad which I've said is my opinion repeatedly. You on the other hand...

Imagine this being deliberate- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu96STA5BDA

Ok, so it would seem so horribly wrong that no one would do such a ghastly thing for profit. I understand, really I do. But look here! (link below) They knew and they cared more for their profits than their workers. I hope in the future when someone points out that a company might be or is, doing something really bad a little light will switch on and you'll think "Of course, radium, the Radium Girls!".



"The luminescent paint used by the women, a product called Undark, had radium as its main ingredient. Workers had been instructed to "point" the brushes by licking them with their mouths.[3] Unbeknownst to the women, the product was highly radioactive and therefore, carcinogenic. The ingestion of the paint by the women, brought about while licking the brushes, resulted in a condition called radium jaw, a painful swelling and porosity of the upper and lower jaws, and ultimately led to the deaths of many of these women.

Radium jaw (Radium necrosis), was allegedly known and initially denied by US Radium's management and scientists working for the company. This was the reason for litigation against US Radium by the so-called Radium girls. The unfavorable publicity generated by reports of illness and death amongst previous dial painters resulted in a drop in potential employees.

Around 1920, a similar dial painting business, a division of the Standard Chemical Company based in Chicago, known as the Radium Dial Company opened in Chicago, but soon moved its dial painting operation to Peru, Illinois to be closer to its major customer, the Westclox Clock Company. Even though several previous workers died and health risks associated with radium were allegedly known, this company continued dial painting operations until 1940, when the operation was moved to New York City.
The chief medical examiner of Essex County, New Jersey published a report in 1925 that identified the radioactive material the women had ingested as the cause of their bone disease and aplastic anemia, and ultimate death.[2]

Illness and death resulting from ingestion of radium paint and the subsequent legal action taken by the women forced closure of the company's Orange facility in 1927. The case was settled out of court in 1928, but not before a substantial number of the litigants were seriously ill or had died from bone cancer and other radiation-related illnesses.[4] The company, it was alleged, were taking too much time to settle the litigation on purpose, leading to further deaths.

In November 1928, Dr. von Sochocky, the inventor of the radium-based paint, died of aplastic anemia resulting from his exposure to the radioactive material, "a victim of his own invention."[5]

The victims were so contaminated that radiation can still be detected at their graves, using a Geiger counter.[3]


The new worker safety laws in the wake of the lawsuit resulted in safety procedures and training for dial painters. Even though radium paint was used extensively during World War II, and was not discontinued until the late 1960s, no more dial painters suffered radium sickness; thus demonstrating how easily preventable was the plight of the "Radium Girls"."
~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...um_Corporation

Democide isn't applicable to Native American's then in your view? Surely it was just as evil what was done to the NA's?

Sure would be nice to know what they're up to, especially in the UK-
"Pharmaceutical companies took their studies abroad. In 2010, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported that 40 percent to 65 percent of clinical studies are now done outside the United States. Less than 1 percent of those are ever inspected by U.S. regulators."- But I bet they're still doing all kinds of things behind the scenes still in the US that never get "inspected".

I used to date a great grand daughter (or thereabouts) of the founder of Beecham Powders who's son was the better known Sir Thomas Beecham. The name Beecham was dropped in some merger fairly recently. He went from a small premises to a big company.

It appears from your link that people who take the vaccine are paying a tax to cover the liabilities therefore bypassing anyone, especially the companies from being criminally negligent. I can't help wandering what happens to the money when it's not spent. Is someone gaining interest on that money and diverting it somewhere else? Looks bad anyway. I can see these companies not caring about the risks when they've nothing to lose, just the opposite.

Doing a clinical trial in the US is difficult and expensive. I wouldn't say "they're still doing all kinds of things behind the scenes still in the US that never get 'inspected'".

I actually do clinical trials for devices and can tell you the companies I work with have take their trials to other countries because it's cheaper. They can do the same trial with same level of ethics and respect for the participant for far less money overseas.

Well you can't argue there isn't good cause for being suspicious that there may be.

I'm sure there's a mixed bag of companies out there, some very ethical and some less so-

"Pfizer’s Trovan clinical trial-

In early 1996, an epidemic of bacterial meningitis broke out in the state of Kano, Nigeria. Bacterial meningitis is an infection of the meninges (the membranes around the central nervous system) that is diagnosed by the presence of infectious material and other changes within the cerebrospinal fluid, and if not properly treated, can result in hearing loss, brain damage, or death. However, with early diagnosis and treatment, the risk of death is less than 15%. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), a nonprofit humanitarian organization, arrived in Kano shortly after the initial outbreak to provide humanitarian and medical aid. The organization began to treat the victims of the outbreak with the intravenous form of chloramphenicol, a WHO-endorsed generic antibiotic for bacterial meningitis in low-income countries.

Within six weeks of hearing about the epidemic, Pfizer drew up a plan to test an oral form of the antibiotic trovafloxacin, trade-named Trovan, on the children in the Kano clinic. If the oral form of Trovan could be shown to be as effective as the intravenous antibiotics were for children, it would be a tremendous “breakthrough in battling epidemics” worldwide.

Children could simply swallow a pill rather than receive injections that increase the risk of blood-borne diseases, such as HIV and hepatitis. Further, a pill would remove the need for skilled healthcare workers to administer the treatment. Wall Street analysts predicted that, if the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the oral form, it would be a US$1 billion blockbuster drug.

On April 3, 1996, Pfizer’s team of physicians arrived in Nigeria to conduct clinical trials on children infected with bacterial meningitis. Nigerian officials authorized Pfizer to conduct the testing in two wards of the Infectious Disease Hospital. Pfizer selected two hundred sick children from the many children who were awaiting treatment, divided the children into two groups, and treated one group with Trovan. The other group of children was “purposefully ‘low-dosed’” with ceftriaxone, an FDA-approved drug. According to Pfizer protocol, the children were supposed to have their blood tested at the point when they were diagnosed and entered into the trial and again after five days of treatment. If a child was not responding well to Trovan, protocol required switching the child’s medication to ceftriaxone. According to an internal Pfizer document, however, this plan for follow-up blood testing was generally abandoned “due to the shortage of medical staff.”

As a result, Pfizer did not analyze the children’s blood samples and therefore could not determine those cases in which the medication was not an effective treatment until the child manifested visible and often permanent impairment.


Pfizer protocol required injecting ceftriaxone into the subject’s vein or muscle. Again, due to the shortage of skilled workers, the drug was usually injected into the child’s buttocks or thighs (i.e., muscle injections) to save staff time and trouble. The shots were severely painful, leading to reports of “great fear and sometimes dangerous struggles with children.”

To lessen the pain after initial injections, the report indicated, researchers reduced the amount of antibiotic given to children who were improving to one-third of the recommended amount. Pfizer maintained that the reduced dose was more than sufficient. The drug’s manufacturer, Hoffmann-La Roche, however, reported that the reductions could have lowered the drug’s efficacy and skewed any comparison to Trovan. There is also evidence that Pfizer failed to switch to standard therapy the children who were receiving Trovan but not showing any signs of improvement. This breach in standard protocol allegedly led to severe brain damage or death for several children.

The requirement of informed consent from either children or their guardians is part of Pfizer’s protocol and is also found clearly stated in a number of related international documents; these include the international human subject protections contained in the Nuremberg Code, the Helsinki Declaration, Article 7 of the International Convent on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), guidelines by the Council for International Organization of Medical Services (CIOMS), and certain WHO guidelines.

However, Pfizer could not produce any evidence that its staff had informed the children’s parents that the proposed treatment was experimental, that they could refuse it, that serious risks were involved, or that other organizations at the same site offered more conventional treatments for free. In addition, Pfizer failed to follow its own protocol that required staff to offer or read documents to participants in either English or Hausa to facilitate their informed consent. When interviewed later, many of the patients and their parents claimed that they did not know they were participating in an experimental drug trial. Pfizer described the lapse as a procedural error, but stressed in a written statement that “verbal consent was obtained.”

After spending two weeks in the Kano camp conducting tests, Pfizer withdrew its personnel without administering any post-trial care. Five children who received Trovan and six children to whom Pfizer had administered a low dose of Ceftriaxone died. Others suffered blindness, deafness, and paralysis. While US medical guidelines recommend that meningitis experiments include long-term follow-up, Pfizer’s clinical trial protocol made no mention of the need for long-term monitoring.

In 2001, the families of the dead and injured children filed suit against Pfizer under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) for violating a norm of “customary international law prohibiting medical experimentation on non-consenting human subjects.”

Specifically, Pfizer was sued for violating the principle of informed consent, refusing to provide the best treatment available when it supplied low doses of the drug approved by the FDA and when it failed to monitor the progress of the children in the study, and for its decision to conduct a trial using a medication that is known to cause liver damage in children. What the families soon learned however — and arguably what Pfizer had known all along — is that neither international nor US law provided redress against American companies for human rights violations committed abroad."
~ http://www.hhrjournal.org/index.php/...rticle/200/297

Argument from ignorance. Isn't that every argument for religion? Hypocrite.

No it is not.

Well of course you'd say that.

And Vice versa...

Except I don't drink the Kool-Aid.

Nope , you have your own special blend.

Yup. Science & Reason. Mmm, goes down smoothly.

Then what is that other part it gets mixed with that causes you to feel the need to spit it at those you disagree with here. There is more to it than science and reason. It goes deeper than that.

I see people on this forum kicking babies and and stomping on grandmothers. That pisses me off. I'm not going to pull my punches when I see that happening.

You take the sink or swim conservative agenda to the logical conclusion and the end result is death by drowning for those who, for whatever reason, can't make it on their own. AND PEOPLE ON THIS FORUM TAKE PRIDE IN THAT POINT OF VIEW. It's absolutely abhorrent. Definitively disgusting. Undeniable unconscionable.

So, do I make some toxic comments? Certainly. More people should. More people should look at the actions of conservatives and let loose (through words, certainly not violence) a torrent of vitriol. Tolerance of intolerance needs to come to an abrupt end. This idea that everyone's opinion is somehow equally valid needs to come to an abrupt end. Evolution is real. Global climate change is real. Widespread poverty is real.

Face facts, show some compassion, or fuck you.

I agree that people should not tolerate many things. However, responding in kind only makes you what you claim to hate, and then we come back around to the word again. Hypocrite. Only, in your case, you are standing for what is right. They are just bastards who don't deserve common courtesy. \

Incorrect. I do not become what I claim to hate. I claim to hate those who would rather see someone's family in ruins after the father gets cancer and is faced with the choice of getting treatment or his kid still having a college fund. Calling out those who show no compassion for that family as the pieces of human garbage that they are does not suddenly turn me into those I despise.

There isn't enough anger from the left. And there's a lot to be angry about. The left should be fucking pissed. The left should be so fucking pissed that they protest until election day 2012 and come out in unprecedented droves.

Seems ironic in the light of your sig Noah to talk of courtesy in the context of wrongdoing.

Just like Jesus in the temple.

Like his savage denouncement of the Pharisees.

Like the cursing of the fig tree.

Brilliant....

I am sick of people not telling it like it is.... we need more 'toxic comments'..

I'm with you man 100%....

Checkmate.

Not even close. You claim to know what others are thinking and their motivations when all you have is the post on a forum and your personal opinions of "conservatives" to go on. You hav snot met them in person, walked by their side, or seen them in their day to day lives. If you really think that is enough to act as you do towards a basic stranger. And yes, you do act that way to people who have only posted once or twice. Then you have lost any moral high ground that you are trying to afford yourself.

Segovius, how exactly do those instnaces compare to BR's verbal assaults on this forum? Where is the moral equivalence you are trying to draw?

Simply because if one can be objective - ie leave out any concepts of 'God', morality and absolutist right and wrong - then what you have is two people who are pointing out things which are, in their opinion, 'wrong' and doing so in a manner which is deemed to be unacceptable.

I wonder if you lived in 1st century Palestine, were not a Christian and had never heard of Christ but your first introduction was reports of some agitator smashing up the sacred tables in the Temple and hitting people with whips- I really wonder what side you would take.

Or...to stretch it further, if you a good religious person of the day and were in the crowd when the freedom was offered to either Barabbas or the blaspheming Jesus who you would shout for.

It's all very well in retrospect but the winners write history - and rewrite it.

The fact is that the Christ story is played out every single day. All the Bible stories are - that's the whole point.

And it's usually the religious who are the 'bad guys' and the 'bad guys' pointing out the sin.

But Jesus knew all that anyway - which is why he got nailed up - maybe read the Good Samaritan (today would be the 'good Muslim' I suppose) or the feast where only the poor turned up.

I think the equivalence is pretty clear if you don't imagine BR to be divine or anything.