Guatemala STD tests 'may have infected 2,500'

[dipsydoodle]

The extent of US medical experiments in Guatemala on STDs during the 1940s is greater than previously thought, health authorities have told the BBC.

The number of infected people could be as high as 2,500, says the president of the Medical Association of Guatemala.

According to a US report released on Monday, 1,300 Guatemalans were infected without their knowledge to study the effects of penicillin.

US scientists knew they were violating ethical rules, the report found.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-14751441

[Judi Lynn]

1. Cannot withstand despising this part of the article you posted:

~snip~
'Nazi-like'

The US Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues had said some 5,500 Guatemalans were involved in all the research that took place between 1946 and 1948, with a view to applying the results on US troops stationed around the world.

Of these, some 1,300 prisoners, psychiatric patients and sex workers were deliberately infected with syphilis, gonorrhoea or another sexually transmitted disease, chancroid.

Concentrations of bacteria were injected into the eyes, the central nervous system and male genitals. Mr Mejia says this was behaviour very similar to that of the scientists in Nazi Germany.

"It took place in the context in which they were judging the German doctors who had been experimenting with typhus and malaria on prisoners of war. The Nazis used Poles, Russians and Jews, while the Americans made almost the same use of Guatemalans," he says.

~ ~ ~
All these years, pointing pudgy, Cheetos-stained fingers at the German Nazis for their actions in WWII. Absolute EVIL.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Sounds like the "soul" of the people who did the same thing in Puerto Rico,

as posted by DU'er Octafish in an earlier thread, in reference to Dr. Cornelius P. Rhoads, the cover boy for Time Magazine in the U.S.

http://img.timeinc.net.nyud.net:8090/time/magazine/archive/covers/1949/1101490627_400.jpg

~~~~~
THE PUERTO RICAN CANCER EXPERIMENT

In 1931, Cornelius Rhoads, a North American pathologist at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Investigations in San Juan, carried out a murderous "experiment" in which 13 Puerto Ricans died after being purposely infected with cancer. In a letter to another doctor, leaked to the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, Rhoads wrote: "the Porto Ricans are beyond doubt the dirtiest, laziest, most degenerate and thievish race of men ever inhabiting this sphere. It makes you sick to inhabit the same island with them.… What the island needs is not public health work, but a tidal wave or something to totally exterminate the population. It might then be liveable. I have done my best to further the process of extermination by killing off eight and transplanting cancer into several more. The latter has not resulted in any fatalities so far.... The matter of consideration for the patients' welfare plays no role here - in fact, all physicians take delight in the abuse and torture of the unfortunate subjects".

When the case was brought to the press by Don Pedro Albizu Campos (the Nationalist Party President), the North American Governor of Puerto Rico had a prosecutor investigate the charge. Rhoads never denied writing the letter, but despite evidence proving that 13 patients had died, eight of whom were treated by Rhoads, the prosecutor exonerated Rhoads, calling him merely "a mentally ill person or a man with few scruples."

However, this "mentally ill person" went on to direct the establishment of US Army chemical warfare laboratories in Maryland, Utah, and the Panama Canal Zone, for which he was awarded the Legion of Merit in 1945. That same year, Rhoads was appointed to the staff of the US Atomic Energy Commission. The Commission was at that time carrying out radiation experiments on unwitting prisoners, hospital patients and soldiers.

Meanwhile, a 1950 Puerto Rican Nationalist insurrection led to the arrest of hundreds of activists, including Don Pedro Albizu. The prisoners later charged they were experimented on with drugs. According to Nationalist Party leaders, Rhoads was finally getting his revenge for Albizu's earlier murder charge. Albizu was denounced by US and local colonial officials as a lunatic, but doctors eventually supported his charges. His health steadily deteriorated, and he died shortly after his release from prison in 1965. Subsequent documents have supported both his original murder charges and his allegations of radiation poisoning.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=3312956&mesg_id=3327364

It's such a long, filthy story, isn't it? Some U.S. decision makers have had all the time in the world to wrap themselves in their shrouds of piety while living like the scum of the earth.

[dipsydoodle]

3. Thanks for that Judi.

I came cross ref to that guy some years ago and knew it happened early '30s. Then when I tried to find it again I blanked - probably used the wrong words to search : something had made me think it was to do with eugenics. More on him here :
Cornelius Rhoads http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelius_P._Rhoads

forgot to say :hi: