I was watching a “discussion” on Facebook yesterday about the rise of the “delta” variant. One person stated that forcing people to be injected with an experimental drug went against The Nuremburg Code. For those who get their information by looking at memes, I guess it’s a nice comeback. But The Nuremburg Code isn’t what people should be focusing on. Because it doesn’t matter.
In case you don’t know, The Nuremburg Code came to be as a result of the Nuremburg Trials back in 1947. It’s a list of 10 principles one should follow when doing human experimentation. Contrary to popular memes, there is no death penalty for not following The Code. There isn’t any kind of penalty at all. There probably should be, but there isn’t.
No country has officially accepted The Code as law, nor has it been accepted as official guidelines by any group or association. So, it remains a guiding principle only. Think of The Code less like a list of rules and more like a list of suggestions.
As it turns out, the United States government used The Nuremburg Code as the basis for their own Code of Federal Regulations, (CFR) Title 45, Part 46, “Protection of Human Subjects”. Now, The Nuremburg Code isn’t legally binding anywhere, but the Code of Federal Regulations is binding…in the United States.
It’s a very long document so I’m just going to focus on the Informed Consent section, which is still sort of long. If you’ve ever been vaccinated (or vacksinated) you’ve had to sign an informed consent form before Walgreens or CVS or whoever would give you the injection. I’ve read all the fine print and nowhere does it even mention the CFR. One would think that informing someone of their right to be informed is sort of the whole point of informed consent.
According to the Code of Federal Regulations 45 CFR 46.116(a)(4) [highlights added by me]:
“The prospective subject or the legally authorized representative must be provided with the information that a reasonable person would want to have in order to make an informed decision about whether to participate, and an opportunity to discuss that information.”
And, just a couple of lines below that, 45 CFR 46.116(a)(5)(ii):
“Informed consent as a whole must present information in sufficient detail relating to the research, and must be organized and presented in a way that does not merely provide lists of isolated facts, but rather facilitates the prospective subject’s or legally authorized representative’s understanding of the reasons why one might or might not want to participate.”
As I sit here reading through just the section on “Informed Consent”, I see that there are so many things here that people should be discussing. Here are a few more:
45 CFR 46.116(a)(6) – “No informed consent may include any exculpatory language through which the subject or the legally authorized representative is made to waive or appear to waive any of the subject’s legal rights, or releases or appears to release the investigator, the sponsor, the institution, or its agents from liability for negligence.”
45 CFR 46.116(b)(4) – (information shall be provided to each subject regarding) “A disclosure of appropriate alternative procedures or courses of treatment, if any, that might be advantageous to the subject”
45 CFR 46.116(b)(7) – (information shall be provided to each subject regarding) “An explanation of whom to contact for answers to pertinent questions about the research and research subjects’ rights, and whom to contact in the event of a research-related injury to the subject”
45 CFR 46.116(b)(8) – (information shall be provided to each subject regarding) “A statement that participation is voluntary, refusal to participate will involve no penalty or loss of benefits to which the subject is otherwise entitled, and the subject may discontinue participation at any time without penalty or loss of benefits to which the subject is otherwise entitled”
People, don’t get distracted by The Nuremburg Code. It’s a nice list and all, but it means absolutely nothing. Nobody is legally obligated to follow its guidelines. What you should be looking at is the Code of Federal Regulations. Which anyone running human medical experiments in the United States must follow.
Now, I might be missing some legal loophole. But it looks to me that there’s a lot of law breaking going on. We all should be demanding that someone explain to us how Big Pharma, governments (both local and Federal), employers, Walgreens and CVS can get away with breaking nearly every single Informed Consent rule there is.
I encourage everyone to read through the Code of Federal Regulations, especially the Informed Consent section. There are a lot more interesting tidbits that I haven’t mentioned here. You should definitely pay attention to it. Because, apparently, no one else is.
