Tuskegee and Today

From 1932 until 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service conducted a clinical study in Tuskegee, AL, using 600 rural black men.  Of that number, 399 had syphilis.  The men were given free medical care, meals, and free burial insurance.  But they were never told that they had syphilis, and they were never treated for it.  The purpose of the study was to follow the natural progression of untreated syphilis, and even after penicillin emerged as an effective cure for the disease, the men were not treated.  The number of victims was greater than just the men in the study:  wives contracted the disease from their husbands and children were born with congenital syphilis.

The study, which has been called "arguably the infamous biomedical research study in U. S. history", was ended by a whistleblower in 1972.

For some time now, the Environmental Protection Agency has told us that particulate matter in the air is extremely dangerous, and they've pushed for tighter and tighter regulation of it based on that. They particularly warn of the fine particulate matter known as PM 2.5, found in smoke and haze, because, they say, it can  make its way deep into the body when inhaled and cause numerous health problems. 

PM 2.5 is so dangerous, according to the EPA, that there is no safe level for it.

And yet... since 2004 the EPA has been exposing humans, many of them already having health issues, to various levels of diesel exhaust and PM 2.5 at an EPA facility at the North Carolina School of Medicine.  Paying $12 an hour to participants, the same agency that has said that there are no safe levels of particulate pollution has been pumping the same pollution into the lungs of human test subjects.  A lawsuit has been filed against the agency as a consequence.  The agency's response has been that the court does not have authority over it.

So I have a couple questions:

1)  The regulations put in place by this agency based on their declaration of the danger of these pollutants cost American industries billions of dollars each year.  If it is so dangerous, how do you justify exposing human guinea pigs to it, particularly with the minimal warning the written disclosure gives:

Does it cause slight, temporary problems as the disclosure says, or does, as the agency has stated repeatedly, cause "premature mortality" at any level?  If it isn't that dangerous, why are they constantly tightening regulation of it, requiring expensive modifications that cost the American consumer at every level?

2)  And if a court has no authority over a government agency's actions, then just who does?

More at EPA Human Testing and EPA's Illegal Human Experiments.  Info on the Tuskegee study abounds for the searching but a good condensed version is here.