American government allows pesticide testing on little children against their will.

I wish I was making this up. But the story goes like this: in August 2005, Congress mandated that the EPA institute rules protecting pregnant women and children from pesticide testing. The EPA, which is by all accounts a “captured” agency as of late (meaning that the industries it supposedly regulates have managed to get their people installed at its highest levels), has interpreted “pregnant women and children” to exclude neglected, abused, or mentally handicapped children. Just look at the letter of the law here:

70 FR 53865 26.408(a) “The IRB (Independent Review Board) shall determine that adequate provisions are made for soliciting the assent of the children, when in the judgment of the IRB the children are capable of providing assent…If the IRB determines that the capability of some or all of the children is so limited that they cannot reasonably be consulted, the assent of the children is not a necessary condition for proceeding with the research. Even where the IRB determines that the subjects are capable of assenting, the IRB may still waive the assent requirement…”

So if children aren’t capable of assenting to being subjected to pesticide testing, they can still be tested. Even if they are capable of assenting and refuse to, they can still be tested.