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Betsy McDonel Herr, Ph.D.'s avatar

Shocking lack of ethics and informed consent. And inducement to use the student population in human experimentation on a mass scale for $$ and for big data "opportunities" in genomics research.

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Jessica Hockett's avatar

Exactly right.

I’ll address the informed consent issues further in a future post.

Oddly, a third-party IRB was used for the summer 2020 protocol. Strikes me as a strange move for an R1…

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Andy's avatar

They didn't just use the student population in their experimentation. University employees were forced to participate also as test subjects WITHOUT consent, under threat of termination of employment. Two years later, students and staff are STILL being forced to test WITHOUT consent, under threat of expulsion/termination.

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Jessica Hockett's avatar

You have plenty of faculty and graduate students who know full well what informed consent is. Were any of the students or employees who were tested in summer 2020 asked to give consent for their samples to be used in research studies? What happened to those samples?

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Andy's avatar

That may be true. But there is a far larger percentage of support staff employees on campus who have little or no knowledge about informed consent, or anything else about university research processes, ethics, compensation, sample/data collection & storage, etc. For example, the average Building Service Worker (janitor), Food Service Worker, or someone in the building trades (in other words, most blue-collar campus employees) know little to nothing about informed consent or anything else about university research processes, ethics, compensation, sample/data collection & storage, etc. So when a supervisor tells them get jabbed, test, or you're fired, they comply, because they don't know any better, and they don't have the money or resources to fight the University juggernaut if they do choose to resist.

I can't speak for students, but employees were NOT asked to give informed consent in summer 2020 for the spit test research study. We were simply told, "Here's a new COVID spit test that we developed. It's gonna save the world. You WILL participate in the program,. To not do so could result in losing your job."

As to what happened to the samples, I've no idea what's happened to any samples after I spit in a tube and place it in a rack at the testing center each week,

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Jessica Hockett's avatar

You are correct - my "dig" was at the faculty who know better.

The University should be able to provide records that show how the summer 2020 testing program was implemented, including the associated IRB-approved protocols and consent forms for research-participants.

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Andy's avatar

The challenge will be getting the University to publicly share any of those records--if they exist.

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Jessica Hockett's avatar

It's not a challenge when you request via FOIA. Stay tuned...

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Andy's avatar

Killeen and his CFO minion Ghosh also repeatedly state that Shield received no Federal funds. But he very carefully states that they didn't DIRECTLY receive Federal funds. Nothing was said about receiving Federal funds funneled through the state budget by Governor Buttercow.

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Jessica Hockett's avatar

Correct.

Also “none have gone to monetize Shield”

Monetize being the key word

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Lincoln Microphone LLC's avatar

wow

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Andy's avatar

Killeen repeatedly throws the Board of Trustees under the bus, deftly dodging any accountability or responsibility for himself or any other university administrators.

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Sheila Crook-Lockwood's avatar

I tweeted out this and Pt. 1. Just FYI

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Jessica Hockett's avatar

Thanks!

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Kristin Pilant's avatar

Time for a lawsuit to protect the kids genetic data

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