On Aug 15 a three year old Cincinnati-area boy Marcus Fiesel, was reported missing. The truth has finally come out. On August 4th Marcus's arms were tied behind his back, wrapped in a blanket and bound with packing tape, and was locked into a closet by his foster parents. The boy was dead when they returned from thier two day long trip on August 6th. The foster dad then took the boys body to a rural location and burned it, several times, and reported him missing, over a week later. They claimed innoence even while they moved to a new house just days after he went missing. Then the until the police found the body, not far from a remote house of one foster mother's family members. no national outlet has reported it, it's largely been ignored due to the renewed media obsession with JonBenet Ramsey. Was it that Marcus was a boy? That he was dark haired? Or that he was poor and in foster care?
posted by Dome-O-Rama on Aug 31, 2006 - 90 comments

Did the blue dress ever exist? Regina Louise had a miserable childhood, shuttled from foster home to foster home, at best ignored at best and at worst abused. There was only one happy memory from her childhood: the time she spent with the sole foster mother to ever show her love. But that woman had vanished from Louise's life years ago, and it seemed unlikely they'd ever meet again... (Warning: this newspaper article may make you cry.)
posted by yankeefog on Dec 31, 2005 - 46 comments

That BBC article about AIDS and NYC? Debunked. This one's for schroedinger, who posted the original BBC story about the documentary accusing the NYC Association for Children’s Services of using children in foster care for drug testing experiments without parental consent on MeFi here. Here's an intelligent and well thought out rebuttal from blogger respectfulofotters to the points made (and sources used by,) the documentary.
posted by zarq on Dec 3, 2004 - 41 comments

New York's HIV Experiment. Need test subjects for your highly experimental, possibly lethal drugs but don't want to deal with consent issues? Don't worry, New York City's Association for Children's Services has got you covered! Just ask GlaxoSmithKline about its continuing antiretroviral drug trials. Not only does the ACS provide it and other pharmaceutical companies with high-quality HIV-positive orphans and foster children, but it administers the drugs to them as well! Kids not willing to take the pills? The ACS will stick peg-tubes in their stomachs. Foster parents refusing to give kids the drugs? The ACS will charge them with abuse and put the kids somewhere else. Wondering about Tuskegee comparisons or how the combination of side-effects like diarrhea and swollen joints with no evidence of benefits fits into a cost-benefit analysis? Why? This is the ACS! They can do whatever they want.
posted by schroedinger on Dec 2, 2004 - 81 comments