Possible Long-term Health Effects
No Whitecoats died during the test period. The Army has addresses for only 1000 of the 2300 people known to have volunteered. Only about 500 (23%) of the Whitecoats have been surveyed, and the military chose not to fund blood tests. A handful of respondents claim to have lingering health effects, and at least one subject claims to have serious health problems as a result of the experiments.
In 2005, an assessment of health status among the Project Whitecoat research volunteers was published. It reflected the self-reported, current health status among 358 "exposed" individuals and 164 unexposed “control” subjects and found no conclusive evidence that receipt of investigational agents was related to any adverse health outcomes. No differences in current overall health, current exercise levels, self-reported symptoms, and self-reported medical conditions were seen between the study groups. However, possible associations were seen between exposure to antibiotics or other biological agents and self-reported asthma, as well as between receipt of tularemia vaccine(s) and self-reported asthma and increased frequency/severity of headaches. The size of the study population was judged to be insufficient to assert with confidence that the statistical associations with asthma and headaches were real.
Read more about this topic: Operation Whitecoat
Famous quotes containing the words long-term, health and/or effects:
“The strongest and most effective [force] in guaranteeing the long-term maintenance of ... power is not violence in all the forms deployed by the dominant to control the dominated, but consent in all the forms in which the dominated acquiesce in their own domination.”
—Maurice Godelier (b. 1934)
“...I am who I am because I’m a black female.... When I was health director in Arkansas ... I could talk about teen-age pregnancy, about poverty, ignorance and enslavement and how the white power structure had imposed it—only because I was a black female. I mean, black people would have eaten up a white male who said what I did.”
—Joycelyn Elders (b. 1933)
“Some of the greatest and most lasting effects of genuine oratory have gone forth from secluded lecture desks into the hearts of quiet groups of students.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)