Bruminating Evil & The Final Stand with Vera Sharav Mark Twain once said that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. That being said, do you, as someone who is an awakened mind see some distributing similarities between today and one of the darkest periods in world history? Our featured guest Vera Sharav is going to help us understand the past so we can be more aware of the present and have an idea of what to likely anticipate in the future. This could very well be humanity’s last stand. A public advocate for human rights is the founder and president of the Alliance for Human Research Protection (AHRP) which serves as an information resource and public interest watchdog organization whose goal is to unlock the walls of secrecy in biomedical research and bring accountability to that endeavor. AHRP Infomails have a wide following: they are read by physicians and scientists, public health officials, journalists, lawyers, and patient advocacy organizations. Her advocacy achievements include: suspension of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) pesticide experiment (CHEERS) on children; complaint led to two federal investigations on the use of children in foster care as guinea pigs in experimental AIDS drug and vaccine trials; suspension of smallpox vaccine on children; suspension of “violence prediction” experiment that exposed 6–11 year old NYC boys of color to fenfluramine ; opened a public debate about the ethics of relapse-inducing experiments in schizophrenia patients. Organized families and victims of unethical research to join her in testifying before the National Bioethics Advisory Committee (NBAC) — re: unethical experimentation on mentally disabled psychiatric patients; those testimonies led to a prize-winning series in the Boston Globe, “Doing Harm: Research on the Mentally Ill” — ultimately resulting in the shutdown of 29 clinical trials at the National Institute of Mental Health (1999). Mrs. Sharav served on the Children’s Workgroup of the National Human Research Protection Advisory Committee where she was the sole dissenter objecting to expanded use of children in high risk medical experiments. She has testified before public policy advisory panels including, the Institute of Medicine — against human pesticide experiments; against prison drug research; numerous FDA hearings, against misuse of psychotropic drugs for children. She has been an invited presenter at various professional and academic forums: World Federation of Science Journalists, London; National Academy of Sciences Policy Fellow program and National Public Health Association re: screening for mental illness; Consumers Institute for Medicines and Health, Stockholm — re: America’s overmedicated children; Columbia University; NY Hospital, Cornell; U.S. military medical ethics forum; University of Texas. Her recent peer-reviewed publications include: Screening for Mental Illness: The Merger of Eugenics and the Drug Industry, Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry (2005); Conflicts of Interest in Biomedical Research Harm Children With and Without Disabilities,” Journal of Disability Policy Studies (2004); “The Impact of FDAMA on the recruitment of children for research,” EHPP (2003); “Children in Clinical Research: A Conflict of Moral Values,” American Journal of Bioethics (2003); The ethics of conducting psychosis-inducing experiments,” Accountability in Research (1999). LINK: About the Alliance for Human Research Protection Our Mission The Alliance for Human Research Protection (AHRP) is a national network of lay people and professionals who are committed to upholding the humanitarian values and ethical standards of medicine enshrined in the Hippocratic Oath: “First, do no harm”; the Nuremberg Code (1947): “The Voluntary informed consent of the human subject is absolutely essential”; and the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (2005): “Any preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic medical intervention is only to be carried out with the prior, free and informed consent of the person concerned, based on adequate information.” AHRP’s mission is to ensure that the moral right of voluntary medical decision-making is upheld. To accomplish that mission, we engage in an educational campaign, providing relevant factual information including ethical, legal, technical reports, and media reports. We endeavor to counter widely disseminated false claims that exaggerate the benefits of medical interventions, while minimizing risks. Our educational efforts are directed at both professionals and the lay public, who may be unaware of a body of suppressed scientific evidence that refutes false promotional claims for drugs; including antidepressants, antipsychotics, statins; medical devices; and vaccinations, including those for Hepatitis B, HPV, and the flu. Our goal is to empower citizens with accurate information so that they can exercise their right to informed consent to medical research and medical procedures within clinical care. As a citizens’ watchdog group, AHRP brings to public attention specific unethical violations of informed consent wherever they occur.