This American confession is an insult to Guatemala

[Judi Lynn]

This American confession is an insult to Guatemala
The attitude of the US establishment to central America has barely changed since the syphilitic atrocity of 1946-8
Hugh O'Shaughnessy guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 31 August 2011 22.30 BST

The commission called in by President Obama to investigate American involvement in the deliberate infection of Guatemalans with sexually transmitted diseases has reported its interim findings. The case concerns 5,500 Guatemalans who were the subject of "medical research" that took place with US collaboration between 1946 and 1948: 1,300 were deliberately exposed to sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis, gonorrhoea or chancroid.

Dr Amy Gutmann, a US university president who led the investigation, said some of the staff involved were "grievously wrong" and "morally culpable to various degrees". I note however that the implication that some were not "grievously wrong" and others were only partially guilty.

To be frank, the labours of President Obama's commission and Dr Gutmann's carefully nuanced statement would be laughable if they were not so insulting. They appear a sort of political legerdemain that, by offering a confession to one crime, is seeking to divert attention and escape responsibility for an infinitely greater one.

What happened with the syphilitic atrocity between 1946 and 1948 was as nothing when compared with the US involvement in cataclysmic genocide of 200,000 people visited on Guatemala – and particularly on the Mayans and other indigenous peoples – when that country was under the heel of military dictatorships fostered, encouraged and supported by Washington.

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/31/insult-guatemala-syphilitic-atrocity

[MADem]

1. A Republican wouldn't have investigated anything at all.

No one would have known a thing, it would have been covered up. Obama wasn't even alive when that shit went down, and odds are most of the "evil doers" are dead as doornails themselves; the writer is a Latin American enthusiast with a Hate America First attitude. No matter what one does, it will never be enough, because Americans are EVIL, donchaknow....

[marmar]

2. While I agree that a Republican wouldn't have investigated at all......

...... I don't see how pointing out the United States' atrocities (some of which are probably still ongoing) in Latin America is "Hate America First". Sounds more like someone telling truths that the mainstream media dare not broach.

[MADem]

4. Obama initiates the investigation. This clown says it STILL isn't enough

and that he's not "sufficiently sorry."

I'm sorry, too, because I have damn little patience for that kind of shit. He'd never have had a smarmy little article to write at all had not Obama done the right thing.

[a la izquierda]

8. Well, I guess I'm a member of the Hate America First...

because I am a historian of Mexico and Central America. It is MY JOB to make sure that people learn about what this country did to our hemispheric neighbors. America was wrong, wrong, wrong, and you putting evildoers in quotes is disgusting and offensive.
Do you have ANY idea what happened in places like Guatemala and Chile? How would you like it if you mother or daughter was raped by soldiers trained in the US, and then those soldiers beat her within an inch of her life and tossed her down a well to be buried alive? Sound good?

And for your information, Americans are not evil. Americans who defend this nonsense and use that Hate America First right wing bullshit meme are evil.
For the love of god.

ETA: There is nothing this country can do to ever make up for 200,000 dead in Guatemala, 50,000+ dead in El Salvador. An apology is fine. But they're just words and they mean very little to women and children who've long searched for their loved ones. You do yourself a disservice by taking the track that you seem to be dead-set on. And yet you claim to be a liberal. And EDITED for language. I'm trying not to cuss.

[JustAnotherGen]

3. no subject

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/may97/tuskegee_5-16.html

President Clinton on Tuskeegee Experiments
PRESIDENT CLINTON: The United States Government did something that was wrong, deeply, profoundly, morally wrong. It was an outrage to our commitment to integrity and equality for all our citizens. We can end the silence. We can stop turning our heads away. We can look at you in the eye and finally say on behalf of the American people what the United States Government did was shameful, and I am sorry. (Applause)

Clinton/Sebelius on Guatemala
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39456324/ns/health-sexual_health/t/us-apologizes-guatemala-std-experiments/
"The sexually transmitted disease inoculation study conducted from 1946-1948 in Guatemala was clearly unethical," according to the joint statement from Clinton and Sebelius. "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."


I'm not seeing how the apology was insulting . . .

[MADem]

5. There was no sackcloth and ashes. A few flagellations with a cat-o-nine-tails and perhaps

a cilice scourging the flesh might have satisfied the article writer....but I doubt it. He's a charter member of the "America Sucks, No Matter What They Do" club.

[ocpagu]

6. So...

...we should ignore his argument because he is "anti-American"?

Let's be rational. This guy didn't even have to bother writing anything. This was sick, perverted, imoral, unethical, disgusting, to every normal person in this world, from any nationality, familiar or not with the author's position.

[Judi Lynn]

7. Scientists hid fatal sex tests in Guatemala but sought approval in US

Scientists hid fatal sex tests in Guatemala but sought approval in US
Rob Stein
September 3, 2011.


US GOVERNMENT researchers who purposely infected subjects with sexually transmitted diseases in Guatemala in the 1940s had conducted similar experiments a few years earlier in Indiana but had obtained permission, investigators said.

The contrast between how the US Public Health Service scientists experimented with Americans and Guatemalans showed that researchers knew their conduct was unethical, members of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, which is investigating the experiment, said this week.

The commission found that 1300 people were exposed to the sexually transmitted diseases syphilis, gonorrhea and chancroid and that at least 83 people had died.


Scientists hid fatal sex tests in Guatemala but sought approval in US Rob Stein
September 3, 2011
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US GOVERNMENT researchers who purposely infected subjects with sexually transmitted diseases in Guatemala in the 1940s had conducted similar experiments a few years earlier in Indiana but had obtained permission, investigators said.

The contrast between how the US Public Health Service scientists experimented with Americans and Guatemalans showed that researchers knew their conduct was unethical, members of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, which is investigating the experiment, said this week.

The commission found that 1300 people were exposed to the sexually transmitted diseases syphilis, gonorrhea and chancroid and that at least 83 people had died.

In one case, a woman who was infected with syphilis was clearly dying from the disease, but instead of treating her, the researchers poured gonorrhea-infected pus into her eyes and other orifices and infected her again with syphilis. She died six months later.

More:
http://www.theage.com.au/world/scientists-hid-fatal-sex-tests-in-guatemala-but-sought-approval-in-us-20110902-1jq2m.html