Several Web sites and commentators, as well as employees of Incarnation Children's Center (ICC) itself, have stated that the BBC documentary Guinea Pig Kids, aired in November 2004, has been "discredited."
As Benjamin Franklin said, half the truth is quite often a lie. And this one doesn't even come close to half the truth.
In January 2007, a team of pharmaceutical-company-funded AIDS researchers and treatment advocates associated with a Web site called "AIDSTruth" sent a letter to the BBC complaining that this widely publicized film -- which had prompted street protests and at least one hearing in New York -- was unfair and distorted the facts. An independent scientists' group called Rethinking AIDS defended the film in its own letter. (The AIDSTruth letter is linked there.)
The BBC responded to each of AIDSTruth's original complaints, one by one, in the summer of 2007. You can view this letter as a note to the very false and distorting Wikipedia page on the scandal here. (It's reference #7 at the bottom of the page. Please e-mail us if you wish us to respond to any of the comments made on the Wiki page or references.)
Not one of the objections the BBC "upheld" denies that the New York City Administration for Children's Services took children from their families for "nonadherence" to drug treaments, that the medical team at ICC treated these children against their will, that the treatments were painful and debilitating, and that they used painful stomach tubes to enforce the treatments.
Contrary to further rumors, the BBC did not take Guinea Pig Kids down from its Web site. The video doesn't appear there -- but it is unlikely it ever did. A full transcript is still available there. And you can view the actual video, somewhat edited, here.
Interestingly, all mention of the BBC matter has disappeared from the "AIDSTruth" Web site and is not retrievable through the Internet archives (also known as the "Wayback Machine"), as the incident occurred in 2007 -- a year not covered by the search engine. We wonder why, if the "AIDSTruth" crowd was so proud of itself for defending the kidnapping and force-drugging of foster kids at that time, it has since dropped any mention of this.
