Buried within the pages of the Free Market News Network site from the USA, comes this truly shocking, horrifying story: Pesticide testing on orphans & mentally handicapped children. Yes, you did read that right.

While it's important to note that this hasn't yet happened, it seems that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is looking to change the rules by which human beings can be used for testing pesticides and various chemicals. These new rulings, it is said, contain huge loopholes that would allow chemical scientists from the government or from industry to use orphans or children with learning disabilities as human guinea pigs. A statement from the Organic Consumers Association (OCA), the body that has drawn the public's attention to these loopholes, reads:

"Children who 'cannot be reasonably consulted', such as those that are mentally handicapped or orphaned newborns may be tested on. With permission from the institution or guardian in charge of the individual, the child may be exposed to chemicals for the sake of research."

"Cannot be reasonably consulted" - now there's one hell of a scary phrase.

Currently, this is a story that doesn't seem to have gone any further than the Free Market News Network, but have you heard anything else about it - particularly if you're in America? Or is it going unnoticed by the general public? We've all heard about gaps in the law that potentially allow such worrying things to happen - let's hope that this one is jumped upon and closed via much greater clarification in the law, and that it's done as soon as possible, before any of these rulings become awful reality.