U.S. scientific researchers infected hundreds of Guatemalan mental patients with sexually transmitted diseases from 1946 to 1948 -- a practice that only came recently to light thanks to the work of an academic researcher. On Friday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius issued a formal apology to the Central American nation, and to Guatemalan residents of the United States.
"Although these events occurred more than 64 years ago, we are outraged that such reprehensible research could have occurred under the guise of public health," said Clinton and Sebelius in a joint statement. "We deeply regret that it happened, and we apologize to all the individuals who were affected by such abhorrent research practices."
The discovery of the long-ago experiments stems from another, far better known episode of federal tampering with test subjects to study sexually transmitted diseases: the long-running "Tuskegee experiment," studying 399 poor black men from Macon County, Ala., who had been diagnosed with syphilis but never informed of their condition. Federal scientists simply told the men they had "bad blood" and researchers compiled a four-decades-long study monitoring "untreated syphilis in the male Negro." Researchers never treated the illness over its usually fatal course, even after the simple remedy of penicillin was shown to be an effective syphilis treatment; participants received only free meals and medical exams, together with federal funding of their funeral expenses after they died. The study began in 1932, continuing right through to 1972, when it was exposed in media reports.
One of the better-known experts on the Tuskegee scandal is Susan Reverby, a professor of women's and gender studies at Wellesley College who has published two books on the subject. As she was researching her most recent book, Reverby learned of the Guatemalan project, in which researchers from the U.S. Public Health Service conducted experiments on 696 male and female patients housed at Guatemala's National Mental Health Hospital. The scientists injected the patients with gonorrhea and syphilis -- and even encouraged many of them to pass the disease on to others.
"It was done in conjunction with the Guatemalan government," Reverby told The Upshot in a phone interview Friday morning. "They had permission from the Guatemalan government."
Reverby explained that she learned of the Guatemala study purely by accident.
"I was in the archives of the University of Pittsburgh looking at the papers of the surgeon general at the time," Reverby said. "And the papers there were also the papers of a man named John Cutler, who had also been involved in the Tuskegee study. When I opened the boxes of the Cutler papers, there was nothing in it about Tuskegee, but there was everything about this Guatemala study."
Reverby -- who was instrumental in getting former President Bill Clinton to offer an apology for the Tuskegee experiment in 1997 -- told us that she informed Dr. David Sencer, the former head of the Centers for Disease Control; Sencer then passed the discovery up the chain of command in the U.S. government.
"As with many of these things, it was just pure serendipity," Reverby said. "I was the right person in the right place at the right time."
Chaotic Neutral wrote:Did the experiments yield any new/important results? I always wonder this when I hear about ethics being thrown out the window in science.
On yesterday's NPR's All Thing's Considered, it was said that they were trying to cure someone of the infection before someone getting it.
A nation, a world superpower, so advanced and powerful, used poor Third Worlders as guinea pigs for medical experiments. Nothing new, anyway - the US is not alien to such experiments, as MKULTRA shows, but it is still a worthy piece of information.
Forty similar deliberate-infection studies were conducted in the United States during that period, Collins said.
Forty studies. I wonder who were the guinea pigs? Other poor folks from Latin America? Black citizens of the USA?
The revelation of abuses by a U.S. medical research program is only the latest chapter in the United States' troubled history with the impoverished Central American nation, which has a per capita gross domestic product about half of that of the rest of Central America and the Caribbean.
The U.S. helped topple the democratically elected president Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 and backed several hardline governments during a 36-year civil war that ended in 1996 and cost 200,000 lives.
Lì ci sono chiese, macerie, moschee e questure, lì frontiere, prezzi inaccessibile e freddure
Lì paludi, minacce, cecchini coi fucili, documenti, file notturne e clandestini
Qui incontri, lotte, passi sincronizzati, colori, capannelli non autorizzati,
Uccelli migratori, reti, informazioni, piazze di Tutti i like pazze di passioni...
...La tranquillità è importante ma la libertà è tutto!
The Guatemalans sacrificed much for the United States of America's war on microorganism terror, thus showing themselves to be truly with America rather than against it. There is no need to apologize for this, as casualties are an acceptable loss for any war, and like the vans full of Iraqi children torn to pieces by helicopter fire for the terroristic act of being in proximity to a bunch of Iraqis on the ground with Reuters camera crews, this is merely an unfortunate case of collateral damage - not an atrocity, despite what these limp-dicked liberals and anti-American communists would say. No lives are ever lost in vain in the war against terror, be it in the Middle East, the Middle Earth, or in the infections of the middle ear. These Guatemalans gave their lives, and had their precious bodily fluids sapped and impurified, in the name of something far greater than themselves and their country. American foreign interests, God's most beautiful creation. So for their values, their loyalties, and in knowing what is most important in the free world - namely the United States of America - these Guatemalan patriots have done their solemn duties in refreshing the tree of liberty from time to time with their infected blood and urethral discharges. God bless Guatemala, but not as much as He blesses America. Thank you, all of you.
"DO YOU WORSHIP HOMOSEXUALS?" - Curtis Saxton (source) shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN! Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people - PeZook Shroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic Pink Sugar Heart Attack!
Stas Bush wrote:A nation, a world superpower, so advanced and powerful, used poor Third Worlders as guinea pigs for medical experiments. Nothing new, anyway - the US is not alien to such experiments, as MKULTRA shows, but it is still a worthy piece of information.
Forty similar deliberate-infection studies were conducted in the United States during that period, Collins said.
Forty studies. I wonder who were the guinea pigs? Other poor folks from Latin America? Black citizens of the USA?
The revelation of abuses by a U.S. medical research program is only the latest chapter in the United States' troubled history with the impoverished Central American nation, which has a per capita gross domestic product about half of that of the rest of Central America and the Caribbean.
The U.S. helped topple the democratically elected president Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 and backed several hardline governments during a 36-year civil war that ended in 1996 and cost 200,000 lives.
The most infamous one is the Tuskegee Experiment where black sharecroppers had the same thing done to them for 40 years and they were never treated during the study time.
Stas Bush wrote:A nation, a world superpower, so advanced and powerful, used poor Third Worlders as guinea pigs for medical experiments. Nothing new, anyway - the US is not alien to such experiments, as MKULTRA shows, but it is still a worthy piece of information.
Forty similar deliberate-infection studies were conducted in the United States during that period, Collins said.
Forty studies. I wonder who were the guinea pigs? Other poor folks from Latin America? Black citizens of the USA?
The revelation of abuses by a U.S. medical research program is only the latest chapter in the United States' troubled history with the impoverished Central American nation, which has a per capita gross domestic product about half of that of the rest of Central America and the Caribbean.
The U.S. helped topple the democratically elected president Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 and backed several hardline governments during a 36-year civil war that ended in 1996 and cost 200,000 lives.
The most infamous one is the Tuskegee Experiment where black sharecroppers had the same thing done to them for 40 years and they were never treated during the study time.
Mistakes are made in these processes, and a lot of them are inhumane. But the benefits they could yield may save more lives than those that are endangered. The ethical nightmare of experiments like these destroy men.
Not really. By that logic we should kill health people because we can use their organs for multiple sick people.
When you have to worry that your life is going to be forfeited by the state because it suddenly decided your body is more useful as a lab or for its parts, society starts to break down.
Samuel wrote:Not really. By that logic we should kill health people because we can use their organs for multiple sick people.
When you have to worry that your life is going to be forfeited by the state because it suddenly decided your body is more useful as a lab or for its parts, society starts to break down.
Wasn't saying it's right, just that the benefits can often outweigh the risks. Personally, I think no life should be sacrificed for any reason, no matter what the benefit, unless the person was completely willing to do so.
Samuel wrote:Not really. By that logic we should kill health people because we can use their organs for multiple sick people.
Start with the least valuable people first.
Arachnidus wrote:Wasn't saying it's right, just that the benefits can often outweigh the risks. Personally, I think no life should be sacrificed for any reason, no matter what the benefit, unless the person was completely willing to do so.
Why should the life of one stand in the way of the life of many?
Samuel wrote:Not really. By that logic we should kill health people because we can use their organs for multiple sick people.
Start with the least valuable people first.
I am curious. How do you define the value of a person?
Arachnidus wrote:Wasn't saying it's right, just that the benefits can often outweigh the risks. Personally, I think no life should be sacrificed for any reason, no matter what the benefit, unless the person was completely willing to do so.
Why should the life of one stand in the way of the life of many?
[/quote]
Does, in your mind, the Government have the right to kill people after determining that there might be the slim possibility it would lead to some improvements for society as a whole?
Whoever says "education does not matter" can try ignorance
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A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient, to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is 'survival as what'? A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult! - Chief Judge Haywood
------------ My LPs
Use the guiding light of the free market. If they earn a lot of money, that must be because they deserve it, because they are good hard working people who are better than the rest. Paris Hilton will be the model of all human society in achieving its genetic perfection.
"DO YOU WORSHIP HOMOSEXUALS?" - Curtis Saxton (source) shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN! Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people - PeZook Shroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic Pink Sugar Heart Attack!
"
- PeZook
