Guatemalan Guinea Pigs

[unhappycamper]

http://gulfnews.com/polopoly_fs/illustration-1.691741!image/2915625066.jpg_gen/derivatives/box_475/2915625066.jpg

This dark episode allows for the discovery of other, mostly political, abuses committed by the United States in Central America.


Guatemalan Guinea Pigs
El Tiempo, Colombia
Translated By Arie Braizblot
5 October 2010
Edited by Celeste Hansen

It is well known that the Nazis conducted medical experiments on the Jewish and Gypsy populations during World War II. What has been hidden is that a few years later, the United States, who fought against the Nazis, utilized similar practices in Guatemala. The facts were concealed for over six decades but recently revealed after an investigation led by a professor from Wellesley College.

According to archives and clinical files uncovered by Dr. Susan Reverby, a group of doctors from the U.S. Department of Health infected 696 Guatemalan prisoners and mental patients with the syphilis and gonorrhea viruses. Initially, the doctors attempted to infect the subjects via prostitutes who carried the diseases, but after finding that the infection took too long to occur, the doctors chose to inject agents of the disease into the bodies of the victims. Many of the guinea pigs became ill, and one patient died.

The operation was so shocking that last week, after receiving the news, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a public apology on behalf of her country, and Barack Obama spoke with Alvaro Colom, the Guatemalan president, to offer his apologies. Colom created a special commission to further clarify the case and, if necessary, demand punishment for those responsible, as well as compensation for the victims.

This dark episode allows for the discovery of other, mostly political, abuses committed by the United States in Central America. The famous American investigative journalist Robert Parry denounced the counter-insurgency political experiments put forth by his country in the last half century, which he compared to the venereal disease experiments. Among the most deplorable was the overthrow of the popularly elected government of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 for acting against the interests of the United Fruit Company, in a coup led by Guatemalan militants but supported by Washington.

Unfortunately, the Frankenstein-like laboratory set up in Guatemala was not unusual. Over the past few years, leaked information has surfaced about experiments by multinational laboratories in Nigeria and India and a crazy gringo medical team that conducted brain transplants in Ukraine. The helplessness and ignorance of the patients was fertile ground for this type of abuse.

[Ian David]

1. Brain transplants??

The First Head Transplant
Stranger than Fiction

<snip>

He removed the brain of one dog and transplanted it into the neck of a second dog. The brain was connected to the blood supply of the host animal and electrodes were put in place to monitor the brain's activity. This begged the question: "If the brain is alive, is it conscious?" It was a question White could not answer.

White's work was not unnoticed in the Soviet Union, and, unusually, there followed a number of visits by the Russians to the Ohio facility and a number of reciprocal visits by White to Russia.

One person that White was keen to meet, was the man who had inspired him years before - Vladimir Demikhov. Demikhov had continued his work with organ transplants and had revolutionised heart surgery. However, by 1966 he had fallen foul of the authorities, who thought his methods outlandish.

Following his visits to Russia, White returned with ideas to prove a transplanted brains consciousness. He had learned of experiments carried out by the Soviets where the severed head of a dog was kept alive and displayed cognitive reactions.

More:
http://www.mymultiplesclerosis.co.uk/stranger-than-fiction/head-transplant.html



Subject: Human brain transplants at the hospital of Kiev in Ukraine

In Cleveland Ohio (USA) a Doctor White has for decades been carrying out "experiments" in a hospital involving the transplant of baboons' brains and heads to animals of the same species and has for many years been publicizing the fact that he would like to transplant human heads and/or brains to other human beings in order to solve the problems of tetraplegics. He claims that this would result in the transfer of memory, feelings, knowledge, personality and even "soul" from one person to another.

As can be easily imagined, this hypothesis raises serious ethical and scientific problems. In order to overcome any ethical and moral difficulties, Doctor White has, according to an interview he gave to the Italian weekly "Sette", chosen to continue his "experiments" at the hospital in Kiev, Ukraine, where he has already worked in the past.

On 6 December 1996 the General Affairs Council adopted an action plan for the development of relations with Ukraine, which envisages, inter alia, measures in the field of universities, health and bringing of Ukrainian standards into line with those of the Community.

Does the Commission not consider that it should inform the Ukrainian Government that experiments involving human brain transplants contravene the Bioethics Convention and are a crime against humanity and that to permit such "experiments" could compromise the EU/Ukraine cooperation programmes?

More:
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+WQ+E-1997-0237+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN&language=MT


Full Body Transplant
Heads you win, bodies you lose
by Patrick Di Justo Published October 4, 1999 in Scope

Dr. White likes to cut the heads off small animals and attach them to different bodies. And now he wants to do this to humans in the immediate future. Dr. White calls this head swap procedure a "full body transplant," following his philosophy that a person's identity is in the head, not the dangling stuff attached to it below the neck. He believes his first patients will be people with high-level spinal cord injuries, like Superman actor Christopher Reeve.

A devout Catholic, and member of the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Dr. Robert White is Professor of Neurosurgery at Case Western Reserve University and one of the world's leading neurologists. He's virulently pro-life, believing strongly that human embryos have no place in brain tissue experimentation. He's been endowed with the Lifetime Humanitarian Award by the American Association of Neurological Science Surgeons and he's an accomplished popular author, writing heartwarming tales of patients who have been helped by his work.

<snip>

While attaching a new body to a quadriplegic's non-working spinal column -- essentially trading one paralyzed body for another -- seems about as useful as giving Madeleine Albright a Mary Kay makeover, White maintains that it is the right thing to do. Quadriplegics generally die from multiple organ failure, as the body's feedback mechanisms fail to detect minor internal damage over the years. Giving a quad a new set of organs in one package could substantially increase their lifespan, if not their quality of life.

That's why White is in negotiations with neurosurgical colleagues in Ukraine -- chosen for its first-class neurology work and its relative media isolation -- to perform the first human body transplant next year. Conveniently, Ukraine also suffers from a lack of medical ethics review boards.

More:
http://www.gettingit.com/article/134