to think that the unemployed are little better than guinea pigs?

[ElizabetaLuknichnaTomanovskaya]

Well Ian Duncan Smith seems to think that unemployed people (extend that to all UC claimants in future) should be used as guinea pigs in drugs trials.

I wonder, if you fail to offer up your body to be used by the huge pharmaceuticals giants as nothing more than a lab rat, will you be sanctioned? www.scriptonitedaily.com/

Whilst I see nothing wrong with people taking part in trials for cash reward and nothing wrong with pursuing medical breakthroughs, there is something quite disturbing when you remove choice and replace this with compulsion. Combined with the recent government rhetoric around welfare claimants and cuts to welfare, the new stringent rules around applying and the sanction regime this just smacks of a new right wing onslaught against what they consider untermensch.

Am I being unreasonable to ask where this will all end? or are the conservatives unreasonable to compel people to be lab rats?

Somebody forgot to tell IDS that 1984 is not a fucking instruction manual.

I find it quite worrying, a slippery slope.

Is this actually true?

This can't be true...surely. Didn't enforced medical testing take place in concentration camps?

Have quick look at the link, there are two screenshots which clearly show that the universal jobs match service is recommending people take part in drugs trials.

Dawndonna - how true.

I laughed when I first read this parody story but it's getting worrying close.

recommending? or forcing? They're very different things.

when I was at uni the jobs office often recommended these - short term, felxible and very well paid so perfect for students. I wouldn't have a particular problem with job centres promoting them as valid jobs for those who are unemployed.

But to force would be very very wrong. Makes me feel sick thinking about it.

But do you get sanctioned if you knock back recommend jobs?

It's got to be a joke surely?

kittysjones.wordpress.com/2013/09/14/jobseekers-are-being-coerced-into-experimental-drug-trials-dressed-up-as-job-opportunities/
other people are picking up on it now. Looking at twitter can't see anything on there.

I really feel that the language being used in relation to welfare and those that need welfare is very powerfully shaping peoples ethics and ideas around what it is to have human value.

To have compulsion in something like this that potentially threatens the bodily autonomy of one group of people whilst protecting the rights of another is very worrying.

Is this another bullying policy on the victims of unemployment. I mean are they forced to do these trials. What if the drugs trial goes wrong. Do the government hate the unemployed that much that they want them to risk their well being now. I feel so sorry for anyone who's unemployed. x

But... they're not valid jobs. Or any kind of jobs. They're medical experimentation.

The activities might be paid, but they don't come under all the protective jobs legislation, or indeed most H&S.

To allow this stuff onto the directgov job search system is just wrong. It sets people up for being sanctioned for refusing, even if that wasn't the advertiser's intent.

Parsing Zero hour contracts aren't protected either, but if you are on benefits and fit the target group, then you are expected to take employment, zero hour contract or not.

From the last link for those that might not have time to read it all:
Sir-Kurt Alleyne, International Human Rights Commission Ambassador for the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland stated:

“I am greatly concerned that the Coalition Government have felt it’s justified to place Clinical Trial “Test Subjects” among persons Universal JobMatch (Job Searches). These are highly contentious and are in fact at times openly a direct risk to health and have been known to lead to irreversible negative health implications. As many are highly aware, refusing work will cause the DWP to Sanction a persons Claim. To offer any such positions to persons indicates that the government ministers responsible for authorizing this have felt that those desperate to find employment will place themselves in harms way to satisfy quotas required that enable a person to receive benefits such as Job Seekers Allowance ( JSA )”.

"This furthers the already unacceptable manner in which persons are being treated and is unacceptable. This is forcing people to become test subjects if they cannot find suitable other employment on grounds DWP will in fact be able to Sanction a Claim for ‘Refusing Employment

The coalition are already under scrutiny for human rights abuse in relation to the bedroom tax. The Torys have already shown scant respect for the UN human rights mission.

I did wonder where the jobs were going to come from for those deemed to be not earning enough under Universal Credit. This and Workfare presumably.

Holy fucking shit.

It just gets worse,when can we get these bastards out of power?!

The language of this government: benefit cheat, fraudulent, lazy, sofa surfer, scrounger, skiver, workshy, scum, chav...and so on, combined with the liberal cult of individualism is powerfully shaping the way we value ourselves and others. The holocaust started this way

To compel people to give up their bodies to the greater good of medical research on the basis that some lives are worth more than other lives, is a step away from just lining people up against the wall.

Terrible idea and hugely worrying. Can't quite believe it has even been considered let alone getting to this stage as reported. And I say this as a Conservative voter. Historically at least, suspect that may change at the next election (although who to vote for instead is another question and thread entirely...)

Zero hours contracts are utterly shit in many ways, but they still constitute employment, complete with H&S legislation, while you're actually on the premises working. (It's the bits in between that are the problem.)

This is a step beyond that. Describing being medically experimented on as a "job", and inserting it into a coercive system... Mind-boggling.

[Disclaimer: I'm fully in favour of medical research, and my family and I have volunteered for trials we deemed appropriate for us. Which in my case means no pharmaceutical ones.]

ItIsKnown you are right, there are no jobs, I even question whether there is a genuine will to create real jobs.

Somebody forgot to tell IDS that 1984 is not a fucking instruction manual.

yy

Do you remember the drugs trial whoch went horrifically wrong a few years ago? will try to find the link

Friends did this when we were students - DP never did as he was concerned about side effects especially as we wanted a family.

do politicians wake up in the morning and think, right what can I say today that will really inflame everyone.

In the states they used to put statements out like this to distract from another issue that they want to sneak through behind it.....

Omg - these are clinical trials. Thry honestly want to risk your heslth and invalidate insurance policies to claim basic living benefits!!!!

This is like something out of a horror movie......

this is it

When I first saw the scriptionite piece this morning I just thought, no, can't be right, never could happen. I guess that is what the government rely upon. As their abuses against human rights grow and become ever more barbaric there is the element of the surreal about it all.

ubik "He may lose all of his toes and parts of three fingers"

What rhetoric will they create around people who suffer long term health problems or disability having been forced to "volunteer". Will we see a new category of people "disabled through choice" just imagine the shit they could heap upon those people.