Interesting Objects of Investigation

What’s the secret of Jamaican’s sprinters success at the current Olympic Games? To reveal this mystery is the scientific community’s aim these days. There are many theories to explain the Jamaicans’ outstanding speed. Some think the key to the runners’ success lies in the clandestine giving of drugs. Others maintain it is the genes, or pristine water from Jamaica’s Blue Mountains, or the yams.

More scientific is the theory of actin A, a protein produced naturally in the body, responsible for aggression and vigor, found in the muscles of 70% of Jamaican sprint stars. This scientific muscle theory leads some researchers to the historical theory- brutal selection: When still in Africa only the strongest men and women were chosen as slaves. Only the most resistant of this select group survived the hellish passage on board the ships. Up to 18 hours a day they then had to do extremely hard work on sugar plantations, with the plantation owners allowing only the strongest men and women to have offspring. Thus breeding humans, breeding muscles. A horrendous history- maybe with golden Olympic after-effects?

The contemporary theory probably yields the simplest explanation for the sprinters’ success. The Jamaicans are running fast. They run for their lives to escape the poverty of the slums. And lucky they are if they do succeed without doping scandals.
It is a much better fate than that of other poor groups in the developing world. Some of who are no longer walking on the face of the earth for some other people’s purpose of making money. Again and again it happens that even children in “low cost” countries are intentionally exposed to mortally dangerous drugs. They are the world’s cheap human guinea pigs.

Currently Argentina’s National Medicine, Food and Medical Technology Administration is investigating a possible link between the deaths of 14 children and Synflorix, an experimental vaccine supposed to fight pneumonia. The youngsters were taking Synflorix in a clinical trial run by a major British pharmaceutical, GlaxoSmithKline in alliance with The Pan American Health Organization.
Irregularities and ‘poor ethical management’ of patient recruitment had been witnessed with participants, many of who were Quechua speaking and illiterate. Parents had not been made aware of the fact that their children were being given an experimental drug despite the cornerstone of ethical research on humans demanding that research subjects should give prior informed and voluntary consent.

Evidently human life is viewed as a commodity, not a right such that even the death of innocents is tacitly accepted in the interest of fast profits.
The world can no longer afford to run away from this absolutely unbearable brutality- soulless slavery of the Modern World.
What is quickly needed is open confrontation and a fearless fight for everybody’s inalienable human rights.