
U.S. apologizes for syphilis experiment in Guatemala - georgecmu
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6903RZ20101001
======
lawrence
Any time I start to get too trusting of people / government, or too dismissive
of conspiracy theorists, I read something like this.

This is pretty evil.

~~~
tvon
The U.S. also overthrew their democratically-elected president in 1954.

~~~
jesseendahl
For those of you who are curious, here's more info on this:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%C3%A9tat>

"The 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état was a covert operation organized by the
United States Central Intelligence Agency to overthrow Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán,
the democratically-elected President of Guatemala."

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mmaro
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_experimentation_in_the_Un...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_experimentation_in_the_United_States)

[http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14...](http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14708)

I wish most of the incidents linked to primary sources, but assume X% are lies
and it's still awful.

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ciscoriordan
The (deceased) doctor behind this has left a portion of his estate to Pitt,
something they used to flaunt on their website. They've yanked the relevant
pages in the last few days:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:QbyoXXj...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:QbyoXXjQQakJ:www.pitt.planyourlegacy.org/donor-
cutler.php+Dr.+John+C.+Cutler+pitt&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

<http://www.pitt.planyourlegacy.org/donor-cutler.php>

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patrickgzill
If you had told random people in the 1950s and 1960s that this was happening,
you would have been branded a nutcase.

What are the "nutcases" telling us now, that we will find out about 50 years
on?

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forinti
Couldn't they test the drug on people already infected??

~~~
sprout
If you read the article, they were interested in whether or not Syphilis could
be prevented using penicillin. Nowadays we take it for granted that
antibiotics are not ever to be used for prevention, but they were very much in
a formative era.

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ciupicri
This reminds me of doctor Mengele[1].

LE: I've only said that it reminds me, not that it's the (exactly) same thing.
Making other people to suffer in "the name of science" is at least arguable.

LE2: Also, the experiments took place at almost the same time (only a couple
of years difference).

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Mengele>

~~~
sophacles
While intentionally infecting unknowing people with a disease is not cool, the
motive of "we know this works, we just need an full effectiveness study" is
very very very different from "they are not people, we can do random surgery
on children to see what happens".

I think your reaction is quite dramatic, intellectually dishonest, and worthy
of a lot of contempt.

~~~
earl
Bullshit.

If this really was no big deal, if we really hard regarded Guatemalens as
people, it could have been done here at home in the US on white people.
Instead, it was performed on people who didn't matter -- just like the
Tuskegee experiments. The difference here between the US and Mengele is one of
degree, not kind.

~~~
sophacles
No, this is not the same as Tuskegee. In that experiment the people were not
left to get advanced syphilis for years, and intentionally denied proper care.
This is much different than being given the cure after exposure. They both
start the same -- someone is intentionally given syphilis. The don't however
end the same.

Now, if you were saying Tuskegee vs Mengele was one of degree not kind, I
would agree with that, as the the disregard and denial of follow-up is
mirrored in the two situations.

Please also note: I never claimed anything was "no big deal". While the meat
of your argument actually is on point, this first declaration frames the whole
thing as a strawman, please don't do this anymore.

~~~
earl
If you don't see how incredibly wrong _deliberately infecting a human being
with a disease without consent_ is, there's something wrong with you and
you're evil too. And your whole argument is bullshit -- "infecting someone
with a disease isn't cool [but isn't all that bad, really]".

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gojomo
Thought exercise: what will our governments be apologizing for 60-70 years
from today?

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dennisgorelik
Did it help to move medicine science forward?

~~~
mcantelon
Is it possible to move medicine forward without deliberately infecting people?

~~~
icegreentea
They're different questions. Seeing the Mengele reference above, one
interesting ethical question pops up in cases like this. Do you use the data?
One side says that by doing so, it legitimizes whatever was done. The other
side says that not using it is just throwing away all the suffering that
happened anyways.

Anyhow, it's one of those positions that you either waver back and worth on,
or quickly find a position, and then never really move away from. For that
reason, I rather avoid that actual discussion. Instead, I will point out that
a great deal of current knowledge of how humans react in extreme cold is still
based or built on experiments conducted in concentration camps.

So really, you can't dismiss the question of 'was useful data gained" by just
saying "it was gained unethically".

~~~
borism
"Do you use the data?" - what kind of ethical question is that? This is purely
scientific question, has nothing to do with ethics.

There are just some things that are not ethical, like testing on people, or
killing civilians or, you know, torture. Doesn't matter if you got some
positive data point out of that. Those things are simply not justifiable.

~~~
icegreentea
No one is going to argue that the experiments were wrong, and NOT justifiable.
But now the data exists. If its justifiable to use that data IS an ethical
question. And as I outlined above, it's not all cut and dry. Especially when
it comes to the concentration camp experiments, BECAUSE WE ALREADY DID. Are we
suppose to unuse the data? Or what? That's where the grey comes in.

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meelash
Guys. Guys. Stop believing these conspiracy theorists. This story is
craaaaaaaaazy.

