Author: Vera Sharav

Vera Sharav is a long-time human rights advocate. The founder and president of the Alliance for Human Research Protection (AHRP), an information resource whose goal is to unlock the walls of secrecy in biomedical research. Her advocacy has often focused on the plight of children as involuntary subjects in medical and environmental experiments that exposed them to harm. Examples include: a lead abatement experiment sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and conducted by the Kennedy Krieger Institute, a Johns Hopkins affiliate, exposed Black toddlers in Baltimore to lead paint -- which lowered their IQs. AHRP filed the only Amicus brief in support of the landmark Maryland Court of Appeals decision against the EPA and Kennedy Krieger. Her achievements include suspension of unethical experiments: CHEERS, another EPA experiment, sought to expose Black toddlers to pesticides, to prove their safety; a “violence prediction” experiment that exposed 6 to 11-year-old NYC boys of color to fenfluramine --a dangerous drug recalled by the FDA. Her complaints led to federal investigations; and opened a public debate about the ethics of conducting psychotic relapse-inducing experiments. She organized families and victims who testified before the National Bioethics Advisory Committee (NBAC). Those testimonies were the catalyst for a prize-winning series in the Boston Globe — ultimately resulting in the shutdown of 29 clinical trials at the National Institute of Mental Health (1999). Her complaints led to federal investigations of the illegal exposure of Black and Hispanic children in foster care experimental AIDS drug and vaccine trials. These and grossly unethical experiments were co-sponsored by the NIAID under Dr. Anthony Fauci. Her publications include: “Medical Ethics and Contemporary Medicine” in Vaccine Epidemic, “Screening for Mental Illness: The Merger of Eugenics and the Drug Industry”; “Conflicts of Interest in Biomedical Research”; “Children in Clinical Research: A Conflict of Moral Values” in Journal of Bioethics; and “The Impact of the FDA Modernization Act on the Recruitment of Children for Research”. As a survivor of the Holocaust, Mrs. Sharav recognizes ominous parallels between current breakdown of democracy, the suspension of personal freedom, civil and legal rights, restrictive, unilateral government dictates, and ever tighter centralized control and intolerance. Dissenters are ostracized and demonized. This pattern of centralized control led to the Holocaust. At the age of 85, she produced a documentary series -- Never Again is Now Global that fearlessly confronts the disturbing parallels – including the imposition of experimental medical products and procedures. Coerced medical procedures constitute a gross violation of the Nuremberg Code – which was adopted to ensure that Never Again would human beings be subjected to experimental medical procedures without “voluntary, informed consent”. The film also exposes the unbroken control wielded by a few corporate and family dynasties whose ambitions are now global.