April 2, 2015

Johns Hopkins faces $1B lawsuit by research subjects who were infected with STDs decades ago

Source: Baltimore Business Journal

Johns Hopkins faces $1B lawsuit by research subjects who were infected with STDs decades ago
Apr 1, 2015, 6:11pm EDT Updated: Apr 2, 2015, 9:43am EDT

Sarah Gantz Reporter-
Baltimore Business Journal

See correction at end of article.

Johns Hopkins will vigorously oppose a $1 billion lawsuit filed Wednesday by more than 700 family members and research subjects who were infected by sexually transmitted diseases during 1940s and 1950s government experiments in Guatemala.

The lawsuit filed in Baltimore City Circuit Court alleges that Hopkins, as a leading authority on venereal disease at the time, played a key role in a government study of syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases in Guatemala.

The suit, filed by Baltimore law firm Salsbury, Clements, Bekman, Marder & Adkins LLC on behalf of 774 plaintiffs, names Johns Hopkins Hospital, Johns Hopkins University, the School of Medicine, the School of Public Health and Johns Hopkins Health System. It also names the Rockefeller Foundation and Bristol-Meyers Squibb Co., a New York pharmaceutical company.

Hopkins officials reject the suit’s claims and say the institution did not conduct or pay for the government study. Hopkins doctors served on a government committee that oversaw funding for the study, officials said. Robert Mathias, a lawyer with DLA Piper and Hopkins’ lead counsel, described the suit as baseless and said he will likely move to dismiss the case on statute of limitations.

Read more: http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/news/2015/04/01/johns-hopkins-faces-1b-class-action-suit-by.html

April 2, 2015

Anti-Drone Ads Ask Pilots Not to Fly the Unmanned Aircraft

Anti-Drone Ads Ask Pilots Not to Fly the Unmanned Aircraft
by Tasbeeh Herwees

What may be the first anti-drone advocacy commercials to run in the U.S. are set to air in April on television sets all over the country. The ads feature footage from the republic of Waziristan while a voiceover commands, “Drone pilots, please refuse to fly.” On-screen text also quotes the late Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez, a bishop of the Catholic Church in El Salvador, who said, “No one has to obey an immoral law.”

The U.S. armed forces veterans who are spearheading the campaign say the ads will be targeted to areas near Air Force bases. The activists comprise a Sacramento-based organization called KnowDrones.com, which, according to their site, “provides drone replicas and educational materials to support citizen action to achieve an international ban on weaponized drones and surveillance drones—war drones.” Local Sacramento veterans’ groups are also sponsoring the ads.

“We felt that the president and the Congress had been totally unwilling not only to stop the killing, but to provide any information to the public on the scope of these attacks since they began,” Nick Mottern, a KnowDrones.com organizer, told the Guardian.

More:
http://magazine.good.is/articles/anti-drone-ads-to-air-near-air-force-abases