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 Wellesley College researcher Susan Reverby found the archived but unpublished notes from the project.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

The Atrocities of Sheriff Arpaio and his Goons: The Charles Agster Case

Arpaio is an evil man. As I have long reported, he has lost over $40M in lawsuits for Maricopa County because of wrongful deaths and mistreatment of prisoners. His tactics are worse than Guantanamo Bay or Abu Ghraib. It's important we remember his obscene and obsessive tactics as we watch the zoo-like behavior he is now displaying during his racial profiling "suppression sweeps" of Latino neighborhoods.

Here is the story of Charles Agster. In August 2001, Charles Agster, a 33-year-old mentally handicapped man died in Arpaio's jail three days after arpaio's goons forced him into a restraint chair worse than those in Guantanamo Bay.

The incident started when his parents decided to take Charles to a mental help facility when he started displaying odd behavior. On their way to the facility, they stopped at a convenience store. The mentally ill Charles would not leave the store and get back into the car. His mom and dad then called police. They thought the police might help them get their son back into the car so they could be on their way to the hospital. Instead, Arpaio's goons took Agster to the Madison Street jail, placed a terroristic "spit hood" over his face, cuffed him behind his back, dragged him across the floor and strapped him to the restraint chair, where, after he was cruelly restrained, the goons shoved his head forward between his legs until he stopped breathing. Unable to breathe, he lost consciousness. Not breathing, no assistance was provided to him for over five minutes. Finally the guards lay him on the ground and began to provide him CPR, all to no avail. Charles was in custody less than an hour and a half and he lay on the ground unconscious, not breathing. He was declared brain dead three days later. A subsequent lawsuit resulted in a $9 million jury verdict against the county, the sheriff's office, and Correctional Health Services.

Prison Riot Underway Due to Inhumane Treatment & Death! GEO Group Cited for Worst Prisons Ever!

A Prison Uprising is underway at the Reeves County Detention Center (RCDC). This is the second uprising in 2 months. The detainees say prison conditions are inhumane and they lack needed medical treatment. The trigger setting them off in December was a prisoner dying.

This center is located in Pecos, Tx, an extremely "out of the way" location. It houses approximately 2,400 minimum security inmates and immigration detainees. It is operated by the GEO group. GEO attempted to cover up the reason for the prisoner's death by saying the young prisoner died of natural causes. The detainees, risking their lives, protested.

As I have previously reported, the GEO Group, is an international corporation that operates prisons around the country and is frequently in the news for its abuse of prisoners in its care resulting in many preventable deaths. At least eight people died at the Geo Group-operated George W. Hill Correctional Facility in Pennsylvania, the state's only privately run jail. Several of those deaths resulted in lawsuits by family members who say the facility did not provide adequate medical care or proper supervision for inmates.

GEO, based in Florida, also has been under fire in Texas, where it operates more than a dozen correctional facilities. Last fall, the Texas Youth Commission abruptly canceled its $8 million contract with GEO after investigators found unsanitary living conditions at its juvenile facility. Several of the teens said they were sexually assaulted by a guard who was a convicted sex offender, according to lawsuits. GEO lost its contract at an adult facility in west Texas last year after an inspector reportedly characterized the prison as "the worst correctional facility I have ever visited." The inspection was sparked by an inmate's suicide.
Texas legislators have called for a review of all of GEO's contracts with state and local agencies.

Message to Janet Napolitano: Please investigate the conditions in Detention Centers operated by the GEO Group.

Background:

The Reeves County Detention Center (RCDC), built in 1998, is publicly owned by the Reeves County Detention Center Trust and is the largest employer in Reeves County.

The center is funded based on per diem (charge per inmate/per day) paid by the Board of Prisons (BOP).

In 2003, most of the beds were empty and the center was going bankrupt. The County was in trouble. Federal contracts with county facilities do not stipulate how many prisoners are to be housed at a facility, and the 1000 beds in the latest addition to the RCDC remained empty. The BOP stated the problem was the location (out in the middle of nowhere) and it was far too costly to transport prisoners there.

In the summer of 2003, when default seemed imminent, county Judge Jimmy Galindo wrote a letter to his friend, President Bush, asking him to intervene and save the local economy by providing BOP prisoners for the facility. In November, 2003, the GEO Group, a large RNC contributor, was brought in to operate/manage the prison.

References:

1. Dec. 12, 2008 Uprising: Texas: Detainees Protest Death, Seize Hostages, Inmates protesting medical care give up, release hostages

2. Jan. 31, 2009 Uprising: Recent Uprising, Officer: Inmates riot again at West Texas prison

3. GEO Group Abuses - Wikipedia

4. Public Bonds

5. Jail Overcrowding (Randy DeLay (brother of Tom DeLay) hired)

As our President chastises China for their Human Rights Abuses,Americans familiar with Migrant Detention Centers are asking "What has America become?"

As all of America learns more and more about Crony owned Detention Centers, they are appalled and outraged, asking themselves "How can this be happening in America?"
What Have We Become?
Medical Neglect in Immigrant Prisons Reveals America at Its Worst
New America Media, Posted: Aug 17, 2008
BOSTON -- On the eve of the Beijing Olympics, while Bush was preparing to express his "deep concerns" over China's human rights record, Chinese immigrant Hiu Lui Ng was dying in the custody of our great nation's own U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. For months 33-year-old Mr. Ng had complained of excruciating back pain. Officials accused him of faking it. When a judge finally ordered that Mr. Ng be brought to a hospital, it was discovered that he had a fractured spine, cancer all over his body, and very little time to live. He died five days later, leaving behind a wife and two young sons. Even as President Bush scolds the Chinese government for its human rights abuses, he is presiding over a humanitarian disaster in his own country. Millions of migrants, authorized and unauthorized, have come to the U.S. in recent years to exercise their unalienable rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." What many of those migrants have encountered is a society that is unrecognizable from its founding ideals.If a U.S. citizen were to die of medical neglect in a Chinese prison it would be an international incident. The death of Mr. Ng is just business as usual for the Bush administration. Mr. Ng is just one of dozens of migrants in the past few years who have died from apparent medical neglect in ICE's sprawling detention system. In a case very similar to Mr. Ng's, Salvadoran migrant Francisco Castaneda went for almost a year in detention without treatment for a very painful penile lesion. When finally allowed to go to a hospital, Castaneda had to have his penis amputated, and he eventually died from cancer that had spread all over his body. A federal judge described the treatment of Castaneda as "beyond cruel and unusual".While Bush was expressing his "firm opposition" the detention of dissidents in China, his administration was imprisoning migrant children in family detention centers like the Don Hutto Residential Facility. In 2007, then Kevin Yourdkhani, wrote this in crayon from Don Hutto: "I don't like to stay in this jail. I'm only nine years old. I want to go to my school in Canada. I'm sleeping beside the wall...his place is not good for me. I want to get out of the cell. Just pleace give visa for my family."It's cases like these that have led many U.S. citizens like myself to ask, "What have we become?".