What. The. Fuck.

Informed Consent Waived in Public Crisis:

In a public health emergency, suspected victims would no longer have to give permission before experimental tests could be run to determine why they're sick, under a federal rule published Wednesday. Privacy experts called the exception unnecessary, ripe for abuse and an override of state informed-consent laws.

Health care workers will be free to run experimental tests on blood and other samples taken from people who have fallen sick as a result of a bioterrorist attack, bird flu outbreak, detonation of a dirty bomb or any other life-threatening public health emergency, according to the rule issued by the Food and Drug Administration.

For a moment, let’s just consider the possibilities had this rule been in place 25 years ago when the first cases of “the gay cancer” started popping up. One of the reasons that AIDS did not become an even more disastrous epidemic in America than it did, according to the CDC, was the unprecedented willingness of its early victims to be brutally honest about and forthcoming with their sexual histories and other intricate details of their personal lives that quickly gave researchers an invaluable insight into the disease and its transmission. Imagine that instead of allowing people to volunteer information and samples in a spirit of goodwill and a collective determination to stem the tide, AIDS sufferers had been coerced and forced to submit to “experimental tests.” The face of AIDS today in this country might look very different indeed.

Frankly, I don’t trust this administration to honestly determine what is a “life-threatening public health emergency.” From the same people who have erroneously categorized gay marriage as a “threat,” knowing that my possible subjection to experimental tests based on their definition of a threat to public health makes my blood run cold.

(Note to the FDA: That’s just an expression. Put your needles away.)