EPA used humans as guinea pigs

Government excuses its immense cost and pervasive intrusions into our lives because it supposedly “saves” us from dangers and “helps” us with our lives. This just in from the Daily Caller:

The Environmental Protection Agency has been conducting dangerous experiments on humans over the past few years in order to justify more onerous clean air regulations.

The agency conducted tests on people with health issues and the elderly, exposing them to high levels of potentially lethal pollutants, without disclosing the risks of cancer and death, according to a newly released government report.”

It’s not the first time. Let’s not forget the CIA’s MK-ULTRA experiments with LSD on humans. From the SF Weekly:

It’s been over 50 years, but Wayne Ritchie says he can still remember how it felt to be dosed with acid.

He was drinking bourbon and soda with other federal officers at a holiday party in 1957 at the U.S. Post Office Building on Seventh and Mission streets. They were cracking jokes and swapping stories when, suddenly, the room began to spin. The red and green lights on the Christmas tree in the corner spiraled wildly. Ritchie’s body temperature rose. His gaze fixed on the dizzying colors around him….

Now in his mid-eighties and living in San Jose, Ritchie may be among the last of the living victims of MK-ULTRA, a Central Intelligence Agency operation that covertly tested lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) on unwitting Americans in San Francisco and New York City from 1953 to 1964.

“I remember that night very clearly, yes I do,” he said in a recent interview. “I was paranoid. I got down to where I thought everyone was against me. The whole world was against me.”

Then there was the Tuskegee Study. This is from the National Archives:

In the 1930s the U. S. Public Health Service began studying the effects of syphilis on African-American men. Most of the work took place in Macon County, Alabama, in and around the county seat of Tuskegee. The men were given periodic medical examinations but were not treated. Medical and professional journals published findings periodically throughout the study. It was not kept secret.

The costs of the study in the lives, and deaths, of participants, and the effects on their families and communities are incalculable. And the study left a legacy among African Americans of mistrust for the government.

Should we trust the government? Yes — we should trust it to poison us and hurt us, while taking most of our money.