Media Monarchy

US apologizes for syphilis experiment in guatemala

guatemalan ‘experiments’ just one crime in long history of medical-government collusion to use humans as guinea pigs
US apologizes for syphilis experiment in guatemalafrom reuters: The United States apologized on Friday for an experiment conducted in the 1940s in which U.S. government researchers deliberately infected Guatemalan prison inmates, women and mental patients with syphilis.

In the experiment, aimed at testing the then-new drug penicillin, inmates were infected by prostitutes and later treated with the antibiotic.

“The sexually transmitted disease inoculation study conducted from 1946-1948 in Guatemala was clearly unethical,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement.

“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. We deeply regret that it happened, and we apologize to all the individuals who were affected by such abhorrent research practices,” the statement said.

Guatemala condemned the experiment as a crime against humanity and said it would study whether there were grounds to take the case to an international court.

“President Alvaro Colom considers these experiments crimes against humanity and Guatemala reserves the right to denounce them in an international court,” said a government statement, which announced a commission to investigate the matter.

Guatemalan human rights activists called for the victims’ families to be compensated, but a U.S. official said it was not clear there would be any compensation.

President Barack Obama called Colom to offer his personal apology for what had happened, a White House spokesman said.

The experiment, which echoed the infamous 1960s Tuskegee study on black American men who were deliberately left untreated for syphilis, was uncovered by Susan Reverby, a professor of women’s studies at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.

history/mystery updates:
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undocumented language found hidden in india*
video: who killed the electric street car?*

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2 responses to “US apologizes for syphilis experiment in guatemala”

  1. irainesan Avatar
    irainesan

    What do you folk call an individual/ a nation who/ that keeps committing sins and blunders but behaving like angels at the time of deliberately committing sins but, say after, three/four/five/six decades apologising as if they committed the sins out of ignorance/innocence? We hear more such stories from Catholic priests. It is like the rapist brute saying he wants to marry his brutalised and unwilling victim if the court could pardon his atrocity.
    The CIA plotted and overthrew the democratically elected Govt of Mussadiq in Iran in 1953 ( and brought one of the most horrible dictators, Shah to power) for which Obama apologised to Iran after 54 years in his historic Cairo Speech. Americans have beautiful terms such as humanitarian intervention( read CRIME) etc for their sins. Can someone list the names of countries (similar to Iran) where the CIA successfully brought a coup de’tat overthrowing Govts that failed to toe the american dictates. When did the US apologise for the brutal apartheid practised on the African slaves. I forgot.
    Have the americans apologised for assassination of Lumumba? When will they apologise for organising a terrorist army of Islamic fanatics for americas own purposes in Afghanistan with the help of Osama Laden? Or Clinton bombing and destroying the biggest pharmaceutical plant ( called Al-Shifa) producing 90% of chloroquine and TB drugs, in Sudan simply because Osama bin Laden helped to establish the plant.

    Having committed such horrendous atrocities and terrorism around the world the Neocon american politicians will ask why do they hate us?

  2. past medical testing on humans revealed | Media Monarchy

    […] bioethics commission. The meeting was triggered by the government’s apology last fall for federal doctors infecting prisoners and mental patients in Guatemala with syphilis 65 years […]

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