Friday, October 1, 2010

American InHumanity! U.S Infected Guatemalans with STDs During the Same Period They Infected African Americans in Tuskegee Alabama

American InHumanity!! Did "majority" Americans, in the last century, believe their lives were more valuable than the lives of minorities or those in other countries?

It recently came to light that a U.S. research study conducted from 1946-1948 intentionally infected thousands of people from Guatemala with sexually transmitted diseases. Wellesley College researcher Susan Reverby found the archived but unpublished notes from the project. The scientific research study, called the U.S. Public Health Service Sexually Transmitted Disease Inoculation Study of 1946-1948, aimed to gauge the effectiveness of penicillin to treat syphilis, gonorrhea and chancres. Penicillin was a relatively new drug at the time.

The tests were carried out on female commercial sex workers, prisoners in the national penitentiary, patients in the national mental hospital and SOLDIERS. According to the study, more than 1,600 people were infected: 696 with syphilis, 772 with gonorrhea and 142 with chancres.

A similar study was conducted between 1932 and 1972 in Tuskegee, Alabama, on nearly 400 poor African-American men with syphilis whose disease was allowed to progress without treatment. The subjects were not told they were ill with the disease.

The Guatemala study was done under the direction of U.S. Public Health Service physician John C. Cutler, who later ran the Tuskegee experiment, said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the U.S. National Institutes for Health. Collins told reporters that the Guatemala study represented "a dark chapter in the history of medicine."

U.S. officials said Friday that ethical safeguards would prevent such abuses from occurring today. "The study is a sad reminder that adequate human subject safeguards did not exist a half-century ago," the U.S. statement said. "Today, the regulations that govern U.S.-funded human medical research prohibit these kinds of appalling violations."

A statement by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius called the action "reprehensible." "We deeply regret that it happened, and we apologize to all the individuals who were affected by such abhorrent research practices," the joint statement said. "The conduct exhibited during the study does not represent the values of the United States, or our commitment to human dignity and great respect for the people of Guatemala."

President Barack Obama called his Guatemalan counterpart Friday "offering profound apologies and asking pardon for the deeds of the 1940s," President Alvaro Colom told CNN en Espanol in a telephone interview from Guatemala City. Clinton and Sebelius said the United States is launching an investigation and also convening a group of international experts to review and report on the most effective methods to make sure all human medical research worldwide meets rigorous ethical standards.

"As we move forward to better understand this appalling event, we reaffirm the importance of our relationship with Guatemala, and our respect for the Guatemalan people, as well as our commitment to the highest standards of ethics in medical research," the U.S. statement said.

Reference:
CNN: US apologizes for infecting Guatemalans with STDs in the 1940s

8 comments:

Dee said...

I've been following this story across many news sites. I am APPALLED by Many Commenters' responses!

These commenters are NOT angry at those in the US that conducted these experiments.

Instead, they are upset at researcher Susan Reverby for bringing the FACTS to light.

Can you imagine!!!!!!!!????!!!!

pcorn54 said...

Are you really surprised Dee?

ultima said...

There is no excuse for this type of human experiment. When will those who authorized and supervised these experiments be identified and punished?

Icon said...

It seems as if you are using this particular history to insight racial
hatred. Very few Americans alive today were living when those
horrible medical "experiments" were performed on Guatemalan prisoners
and mental "patients." Why should people who weren't living at the
time and had no part in those crimes against humanity be held
accountable for them or apologize for the actions in another time and
place?

I do find those experiments repulsive and I find it shocking the way
some poor "migrants" from Mexico were sprayed with the various toxic poisons. Read Naomi Klein's
"Shock Doctrine" and you will find that similarly horrible medical
experiments were going on even in the U.S. and in Canada on captive
people in mental hospitals who were WHITE. Where is the apology and outrage for them?

Dee said...

Icon,
Re-read the article. I also wrote about the atrocities IN America about Americans infected at Tuskegee.

If we do not remember history we are doomed to repeat it.

Icon said...

Remembering history and harping about it to Americans who are living in a different era today doesn't make sense. There is no reason to think that present day Americans would have advocated what happened in the past or would do the same thing today.

Apologizing for someone else's sins out of the past makes no sense either.

Icon said...

I also meant to add that harping to the German people today about the past Nazism and extermination of the Jews by Hitler-like Germans makes no sense either. There is no reason to believe that the German people today would have advocated for the actions of the past by some Germans or that they would do the same thing today.
Time to stop bringing up all the sins of the past to present day Americans.

Anonymous said...

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