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You are here: Home / More scraping and bowing

More scraping and bowing

by DougJ|  October 1, 20109:49 am| 102 Comments

This post is in: Assholes

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Reagan never would have apologized for this:

“U.S. government medical researchers intentionally infected hundreds of people in Guatemala, including institutionalized mental patients, with gonorrhea and syphilis without their knowledge or permission more than 60 years ago.”

This ghastly project was recently discovered by a professor of women’s studies at Wellesley College in the course of her research on the Tuskegee experiment.”

Hillary Clinton and Kathleen Sebelius will offer public apologies today for the role of the U.S. Public Health Service in the Guatemala project.”

Update. I might have laid the snark on too heavy, I mean that the mythical Reagan who never raised taxes or withdrew soldiers from Lebanon, that guy never would have apologized for it. I realize that this was done under Truman.

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Reader Interactions

102Comments

  1. 1.

    Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther

    October 1, 2010 at 9:54 am

    Wow. Kinda hard to know where to start with this one. Yay? Yay for admitting evil deeds?

    Will this set a precedent? Will we apologize for torture in 60 years?

  2. 2.

    Daddy-O

    October 1, 2010 at 9:54 am

    Republicans love America. Al Gore said it first, to his roommate Tommy Lee Jones at college…

    Love means never having to say you’re sorry.

  3. 3.

    Daddy-O

    October 1, 2010 at 9:56 am

    @Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther: SOMEBODY will, if America ever regains her sanity.

    As soon as the Bush Crime Spree began, I couldn’t help imagining all the future lawsuits, and wonder what they would eventually cost.

    Just put it on Bush’s tab. He’ll pay it as soon as we extradite him from Paraguay…

  4. 4.

    lamh31

    October 1, 2010 at 9:56 am

    Was there ever an apology for the Tuskegee experiments? Not trying to be a smart azzz, I would really like a question.

    My peeps did have to wait >200 years for an apology for slavery, now of course, thx to that apology, according to the VA and MS Govenor’s, slavery and jim crow never happened.

  5. 5.

    jon

    October 1, 2010 at 9:56 am

    I didn’t know James O’Keefe was Guatemalan, but I’m glad the Veritas Project can uncover its own crimes.

  6. 6.

    djheru

    October 1, 2010 at 10:03 am

    But people who think that AIDS was created and spread by the government are crazy, right?

    Just sayin.

  7. 7.

    Scott_SGG

    October 1, 2010 at 10:06 am

    @djheru: Yes. Yes, they are.
    Just sayin.

  8. 8.

    lamh31

    October 1, 2010 at 10:09 am

    @djheru

    AA never forgot the scandal of the Tuskegee experiments, so is it any wonder that they would believe that he “government infected people with AIDS” conspiracy. It’s hard to trust your government when they literally decided to treat your people as lab rats and cattle for the better part of 200 years

    And yet people were shocked, I tell ya shocked about Rev Wright and the dumb AIDS meme.

  9. 9.

    PigInZen

    October 1, 2010 at 10:13 am

    It’s GUATEMALA. Obviously they are not subject to the Constitution therefore we can do as we wish with them.

  10. 10.

    4tehlulz

    October 1, 2010 at 10:18 am

    @lamh31: Bill did in ’97, so be ready for Rush bitching about Clinton tendency to apologize to the browns.

  11. 11.

    daveNYC

    October 1, 2010 at 10:22 am

    Slight difference in the level of expertise needed to infect people with a pre-existing disease vs creating a disease from scratch. The amount of evil needed is about the same.

  12. 12.

    Persia

    October 1, 2010 at 10:22 am

    @lamh31: This.

  13. 13.

    lamh31

    October 1, 2010 at 10:23 am

    @Scott_SGG

    of course it’s crazy to still believe it, but try to tell someone who vividly remembers a time when the government was aiding and abetting the klan and the like in terrorizing people, and you can kinda understand the paranoia a little bit.

    Doesn’t mean it’s not crazy though.

  14. 14.

    IM

    October 1, 2010 at 10:25 am

    Well, we Germans apologized for our genocide

    …of the Herreros eighty or ninety years later.

    So this apology is almost premature.

    So expect a torture apology around the year 2080.

  15. 15.

    Linda Featheringill

    October 1, 2010 at 10:25 am

    Oh my good Lord! Sigh. The evil in that act is just overwhelming.

    60 years ago. That would be 1950.

    Yes, let us apologize. Is there anything we can do to remedy the damage done? Or is it too late for that?

    Edit: Is there any chance that this isn’t true. No. Probably not. Damn.

  16. 16.

    quaint irene

    October 1, 2010 at 10:27 am

    60 years ago. That would be 1950.

    Isn’t that the Golden Age that folk like Gingrich would like us to go back to?

  17. 17.

    wilfred

    October 1, 2010 at 10:29 am

    What does Reagan have to do with this?:

    The Guatemala experiments, which were conducted between 1946 and 1948, never provided any useful information and the records were hidden

    Would Truman have apologized for it? Maybe we should do so in his name.

  18. 18.

    IM

    October 1, 2010 at 10:29 am

    The Japanese-Americans had to wait thirty, forty years too, right?

  19. 19.

    IM

    October 1, 2010 at 10:31 am

    Truman will be right on the case. He has to see to a small matter with two bombs first, though.

  20. 20.

    Villago Delenda Est

    October 1, 2010 at 10:32 am

    @quaint irene:

    Isn’t that the Golden Age that folk like Gingrich would like us to go back to?

    Well, except for the marginal tax rates and all that leftover dross from the New Deal, yes!

  21. 21.

    Erik Vanderhoff

    October 1, 2010 at 10:39 am

    Holy fuck.

  22. 22.

    Fergus Wooster

    October 1, 2010 at 10:41 am

    @wilfred:

    What does Reagan have to do with this?:

    Not exactly sure, but his reaction would probably be along the lines of “I’ll never apologize for the United States of America – I don’t care what the facts are.”

    Although that was George Bush the Greater, after we shot down that Iranian airliner. (To your point, that was actually on his watch, but I think the basic attitude applies)

  23. 23.

    Kryptik

    October 1, 2010 at 10:42 am

    @lamh31:

    Yeah, sadly, the fact that this happened doesn’t exactly surprise me, precisely because of what went down at Tuskegee.

    @wilfred:

    I think the point is that Republicans, especially such stalwart icons such as Reagan, would have to be dragged kicking and screaming to a podium before they’d ever apologize for such past transgressions. Hell, these days, you probably would have Coburn blatantly lying and saying how scientifically necessary this all was. I’m surprised he isn’t saying so right now.

  24. 24.

    arguingwithsignposts

    October 1, 2010 at 10:45 am

    @wilfred:

    What does Reagan have to do with this?

    sometimes, cultural references in service of Greater Humor pass right over the heads of the clueless.

  25. 25.

    Fergus Wooster

    October 1, 2010 at 10:45 am

    @Kryptik:

    Hell, these days, you probably would have Coburn blatantly lying and saying how scientifically necessary this all was.

    “I’m outraged about the outrage!”

  26. 26.

    cat48

    October 1, 2010 at 10:46 am

    @Linda Featheringill:

    Obama is sending Clinton & Sebelius out to apologize to them today. I guess we’ll find out then what that involves.

  27. 27.

    Omnes Omnibus

    October 1, 2010 at 10:46 am

    @Kryptik:

    Hell, these days, you probably would have Coburn blatantly lying and saying how scientifically necessary this all was. I’m surprised he isn’t saying so right now.

    The day is young. He, or someone similar, will get around to it.

  28. 28.

    Kryptik

    October 1, 2010 at 10:49 am

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    And I’ll have a bottle of alky and a shot glass in wait for it.

  29. 29.

    Martin

    October 1, 2010 at 10:51 am

    Fucking girls always apologizing for shit. A guy would just buy Guatamala a pretty bauble to make up for the slight and then ask for a blow job and still come out ahead.

  30. 30.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    October 1, 2010 at 10:52 am

    Hmm, Central America… more than 60 years ago… did they say anything about Panama?

    I only ask because it would explain a lot about John McCain. Did they say anything about rabies?

  31. 31.

    Flugelhorn

    October 1, 2010 at 10:53 am

    It is funny you assholes use this to somehow disparage Republicans and Reagan when it was a Democrat who held the reigns of Government at the time the act was committed (with the approval of the Guatemalan government and the Pan American Health Organization).

    You guys really don’t know how to use a mirror do you? Somehow, it is always Bush’s fault I guess.

  32. 32.

    Omnes Omnibus

    October 1, 2010 at 10:56 am

    @Flugelhorn: Did you hear that whoosh as the point sailed right over your head?

  33. 33.

    El Cid

    October 1, 2010 at 10:56 am

    @Flugelhorn: Well, Reagan was the one who supported, armed, paid, and politically defended the genocidal tyrant and Guatemalan army that slaughtered at least 200,000 of the hill-dwelling, primarily Mayan population, so, yeah, it’s pretty realistic to imagine the old doddering evil fuck enjoying this news.

  34. 34.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    October 1, 2010 at 10:57 am

    @Fergus Wooster: Reagan would say that the gonorrhea and syphilis was ours and any treaty that claimed that we gave it to Central America was clearly flawed and should be ignored.

  35. 35.

    wilfred

    October 1, 2010 at 10:58 am

    @arguingwithsignposts:

    Oh, right. Missed that. The abuse and suffering of these people is used to score a cheap political point.

    Got it. Carry on.

  36. 36.

    Persia

    October 1, 2010 at 10:59 am

    Remember, we need to reject that Kenyan anti-colonialism. Because colonialism has brought nothing but hugs and flowers to our international allies.

    Oh, and syphilis. But it’s a small price to pay for hugs!

  37. 37.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    October 1, 2010 at 10:59 am

    @Kryptik: As was pointed out above, Clinton did apologize for the Tuskegee experiments.

    @Flugelhorn: If you’re going to come in here and not understand the reference, then STFU. The point being that President Reagan, or President George W. Bush, or President McCain, would never have apologized for something like this, out of fear of making America look weak because we all know how apologizing is unmanly.

  38. 38.

    Martin

    October 1, 2010 at 11:00 am

    Ok, good government Friday item coming up, since y’all have abandoned your own friday sanity plan:

    SB 1449 was just signed by Arnold which decriminalized possession of 1oz of marijuana from a misdemeanor to a $100 infraction and no criminal record:

    Existing law provides that, except as authorized by law, every person who possesses not more than 28.5 grams of marijuana, other than concentrated cannabis, is guilty of a misdemeanor and shall be punished by a fine of not more than $100. This same penalty is imposed for the crime of possessing not more than 28.5 grams of marijuana while driving on a highway or on lands, as specified. Existing law provides with respect to these offenses that, under specified conditions, (1) the court shall divert and refer the defendant for education, treatment, or rehabilitation, as specified, and (2) an arrested person who gives satisfactory evidence of identity and a written promise to appear in court shall not be subjected to booking.
    __
    This bill would provide that any person who commits any of the above offenses is instead guilty of an infraction punishable by a fine of not more than $100. This bill would eliminate the above-described provisions relating to booking and to diversion and referral for education, treatment, or rehabilitation.

    It’s a small thing, and the governor only signed it to take some of the wind out of Prop 19, but a good thing is a good thing.

  39. 39.

    Omnes Omnibus

    October 1, 2010 at 11:00 am

    @wilfred: Ever hear of or use black humor?

  40. 40.

    El Cid

    October 1, 2010 at 11:01 am

    @Bill E Pilgrim: Reagan also would have sent out Elliot Abrams to smear the MSNBC reporter who did the story, and MSNBC would have fired him/her or shifted him/her to covering the latest dog kennel news, and a decade later would declare the story correct all along and issue a weak apology. Which is what was done to Ray Bonner who reported the El Mozote massacre by our great friends the El Salvadoran death squad democratizers for the New York Times.

  41. 41.

    Bob In Pacifica

    October 1, 2010 at 11:03 am

    @djheru: I’ve always found it curious how Dr. Gallo (the co-discoverer of AIDS) was working on creating a cancer virus with various different animal viruses, including the SV-40 virus, funded by Litton Bionetics, the military research division of Litton, in the years leading up to the first AIDS cases.

    Plus, the spread of AIDS in the gay population of the U.S. coincided with the original Hepatitis B innoculations in the gay communities around the U.S., a most curious epidemiological coincidence which has never been investigated because the government will not allow those records to be opened up.

    And I know this is a reach, but David Ferrie, the clever but bizarre New Orleans character connected to all sorts of CIA dirty dealings in Latin America in the sixties, was also involved in cancer research and had rooms full of lab rats as part of a research program that seemed to be connected to Tulane and Dr. Alton Ochsner, who was involved in the first polio vaccine which accidentally introduced SV-40 into humans.

    Why does this mean anything? Raymond Broshears, who was Ferrie’s boyfriend in New Orleans, later became a liason for the Hepatitis B innoculation program in San Francisco and as a self-proclaimed minister to the gay community encouraged men to participate in the program.

    So we know that the U.S. government is capable of injecting illnesses into unsuspecting people viewed as being inferior. Southern blacks, Guatemalans. Why not gays?

    It’s a question of character, not the limits of your imagination.

  42. 42.

    Fergus Wooster

    October 1, 2010 at 11:03 am

    @Bill E Pilgrim: Win. Then the Guatemalan president would die in a suspicious plane crash.

  43. 43.

    Kryptik

    October 1, 2010 at 11:06 am

    @Belafon (formerly anonevent):

    I was more talking about the fact that this happened, period. While sad and soul-crushingly depressing, it doesn’t exactly shock me that it happened. Not when were willing to do it within our own borders.

  44. 44.

    wilfred

    October 1, 2010 at 11:09 am

    @wilfred:

    Yeah. But the very first post raised an ethical question worth discussing, which is what a revelation like this could have stimulated.

    But that would have been uncomfortable, I suppose.

  45. 45.

    Malraux

    October 1, 2010 at 11:10 am

    @Bob In Pacifica: Its not a question of character, its a question of technology.

  46. 46.

    Bob L

    October 1, 2010 at 11:16 am

    As The Onion pointed out the ’50s were a carefree time in US Central American relations.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cCLJieV9IY

    But wow, infecting people with VP, that is utterly disgusting. You wonder what goes threw the mind of the toads who infected these people. I know the “doctor” who ran the Tuskegee experiment was just righteously indignant that poor slobs he has screwed over were getting treatment once everyone figured out what was going on.

  47. 47.

    Bob In Pacifica

    October 1, 2010 at 11:17 am

    @lamh31: What dumb AIDS meme? A reporter at the Press Club in D.C. asked him in 2008 about it and he told the reporters to read the book. Did any of those reporters bother to read the book (by Leonard Horowitz) and actually investigate this? I haven’t seen anything.

    So the dumb AIDS meme is that our government can kill its citizens (and others) by secretly injecting them with deadly pathogens but because AIDS is such a horrible disease the government couldn’t have done that because even though I refuse to investigate it myself I can’t believe that they’re that bad as to do that because I can’t believe that…

    I suspect that this is proof of Hitler’s Mein Kampf talk about The Big Lie, that the bigger the lie the more easily the hoi polloi will believe it because of each individual’s internalized guilt about lying.

    There was a long discussion on this right here at Balloon Juice in 2006, with references to Robert Gallo’s Litton Bionetics-funded research in the years leading up to AIDS. You can probably employ Google to read the whole discussion. As I recall it went on for days.

  48. 48.

    Flugelhorn

    October 1, 2010 at 11:22 am

    @Belafon (formerly anonevent):

    Then why don’t you save some of that idiotic snark on the people and party that actually DID commit the act rather than trying to tarnish the people that had nothing to do with it? Too tough? Take up a cause! I know you love to do that.

    I would be concerned that every time we have had a major war with a Dem in office, some ethnic group gets locked up in a camp somewhere. Reagan would never apologize for that! The bastard.

  49. 49.

    arguingwithsignposts

    October 1, 2010 at 11:25 am

    @wilfred:

    But that would have been uncomfortable, I suppose.

    Not at all. This board has discussed torture over and over and over and over. If there’s discomfort over the topic, maybe I missed it.

  50. 50.

    Mumphrey

    October 1, 2010 at 11:28 am

    Well, fuck. I know this shouldn’t shock me, but it does. I have lots of friends in Honduras, and they love Americans, even after the way the U.S. has abused Honduras and other Central American countries over the last 100 years. They aren’t too keen on America as a country, but they’re wise enough to judge Americans as people, one at a time, and not tar us all with one broad brush. If only we had the same good sense about tarring Latin Americans….

  51. 51.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    October 1, 2010 at 11:30 am

    @Kryptik: Sorry, I thought you’d missed the part about the apology.

    Yes, it really is sad that the US has done these things. It does bring up an interesting question of what do people who didn’t have anything to do with an event do to correct the wrongs caused by said event. Some are easy, others are harder.

  52. 52.

    arguingwithsignposts

    October 1, 2010 at 11:30 am

    @Flugelhorn:

    I would be concerned that every time we have had a major war with a Dem in office, some ethnic group gets locked up in a camp somewhere. Reagan would never apologize for that! The bastard.

    You’re right, because the Reagan never engaged in covert operations to sell arms to our sworn enemies, or tried to subvert legitimate governments in central America. And the Bush regimes never got into wars, killed hundreds of thousands of innocents, or held people without charge, or engaged in torture.

    If anyone apologizes for *any* shit Republicans have done to destabilize the world, you can bet it will be a Democrat.

  53. 53.

    Mumphrey

    October 1, 2010 at 11:31 am

    @Flugelhorn:

    Fuck off.

  54. 54.

    Mnemosyne

    October 1, 2010 at 11:37 am

    @Bob In Pacifica:

    So the dumb AIDS meme is that our government can kill its citizens (and others) by secretly injecting them with deadly pathogens but because AIDS is such a horrible disease the government couldn’t have done that because even though I refuse to investigate it myself I can’t believe that they’re that bad as to do that because I can’t believe that…

    No, the meme is that AIDS is an extremely complex disease that would be very difficult to engineer. Apparently you think anyone could walk down to the drugstore and get something off the shelf that would create a constantly mutating blood-borne virus.

    I have a feeling you don’t understand biochemistry, genetics, and virology quite as well as you think you do. It’s easy to come up with a conspiracy theory when you don’t understand the science behind it.

  55. 55.

    Stillwater

    October 1, 2010 at 11:40 am

    @DougJ: Irresistible Reagan bait – still tasty after all these years.

  56. 56.

    AxelFoley

    October 1, 2010 at 11:41 am

    @lamh31:

    Was there ever an apology for the Tuskegee experiments? Not trying to be a smart azzz, I would really like a question.
    My peeps did have to wait >200 years for an apology for slavery, now of course, thx to that apology, according to the VA and MS Govenor’s, slavery and jim crow never happened.

    This. I was watching either CNN or MSNBC (forget which one) and whoever was talking about this said that the reporters who were privy to hear about what our government did to folks 60 were aghast.

    I was like “WTF? They never heard of the Tuskeegee Experiment?” Then I realized that the Tuskeegee Experiment was done on us Colored folk, so no one gave/gives a damn.

  57. 57.

    Brachiator

    October 1, 2010 at 11:45 am

    Reagan never would have apologized for this

    The snark here is misplaced. It’s not edgy black humor, and it comes close to trivializing a despicable act.

    This shit began in 1946, coming right after World War II. There are a couple of things that provide context: the despicable experiments that the Germans and the Japanese performed on prisoners and civilians in concentration camps, and the development of the new drug penicillin. So, we have the government (with a Democrat president in place) and the health services deciding that animal studies just weren’t good enough, that using human subjects was cool, necessary, expedient.

    We also see vile racist assumptions at play, ironically more similar to Nazi perceptions of racial hierarchies than anything grounded in actual science:

    Shattuck shared the belief of Guatemalan health officials that “syphilis is more frequent in Latins [especially in Guatemala City] than in Indians and that, when manifested in an Indian, it appears in mild form.” Racialized assumptions about the disease, central to the project in Alabama, also followed it to Guatemala.

    One other thing: one of the primary doctors involved also had been involved in parts of the Tuskegee experiment, and had no problem with the idea of sacrificing nonwhite people for “the greater good.”

    These people even colluded with the government of Guatemala, helping them set up their health system even as they set up these vile experiments. And as is usually the case when doing evil, they selected subjects who could not complain or object:

    As subjects, they chose the usual quartet of the available and contained: prisoners in a national penitentiary, inmates in Guatemala’s only mental hospital, children in the national orphanage, and soldiers in a barracks in the capital.

    This isn’t shit that you can lay on Republicans or the ghost of the Confederacy, but the general racist tendency of too many white people in the United States that they had the ability, and the right, to dispose of the lives of other peoples.

    And fuck any bullshit notion that an apology lets anyone say “bygones.”

    An important story, and I am very glad that it was brought to our attention here. But the smug, cheap ass, and wrongheaded political finger pointing is out of place.

  58. 58.

    AxelFoley

    October 1, 2010 at 11:45 am

    @Martin:

    Fucking girls always apologizing for shit. A guy would just buy Guatamala a pretty bauble to make up for the slight and then ask for a blow job and still come out ahead.

    Ok, you just won the internets with this post, LMAO

  59. 59.

    Flugelhorn

    October 1, 2010 at 11:46 am

    @Mumphrey:

    By all means, sir! Far be it for me to interrupt the insular circle jerk of the eugenics progressive! Please, do continue to use this atrocity as an excuse to disparage the Republicans! Makes perfect sense! Rather than be outraged that it happened at all, lets make it a moment of levity and imagine ways in which the Republicans might have done this and then not apologize for it (Even though it was a Democrat congress and president at the time).

    Woo hoo! Progressive or die, baby!

  60. 60.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    October 1, 2010 at 11:48 am

    This isn’t shit that you can lay on Republicans

    The missing the point festival seems to be in full swing.

    Who said anything about blaming it on Republicans? Or laying it on Republicans or however you want to put it?

    Republicans have been attacking Obama’s administration since taking office for “apologizing to the world” for the actions of the United States. “Boy this will really piss them off and give fodder for that sort of thing” is how I took DougJ’s comments.

    Nothing trivialized what happened nor claimed that it’s Republicans who were responsible for it.

  61. 61.

    Svensker

    October 1, 2010 at 11:50 am

    @Flugelhorn:

    Somehow, it is always Bush’s fault I guess

    Really? George Bush was involved with the Guatemala incident? I’m surprised, I wouldn’t have thought he was old enough.

  62. 62.

    Mnemosyne

    October 1, 2010 at 11:50 am

    Also, if you read the classic … And the Band Played On, you’ll see that Gallo’s “co-discovery” was a heck of a lot closer to plagiarism than science. His reputation and connections were such that he was able to elide over the fact that he used the French researchers’ data to come to his own conclusions, but really he deserved pretty close to zero credit.

  63. 63.

    celticdragonchick

    October 1, 2010 at 11:52 am

    @lamh31:

    Was there ever an apology for the Tuskegee experiments? Not trying to be a smart azzz, I would really like a question.
    My peeps did have to wait >200 years for an apology for slavery, now of course, thx to that apology, according to the VA and MS Govenor’s, slavery and jim crow never happened.

    Hell, Scotland is still waiting for an apology over the mass war crimes, enslavement and deportation of tens of thousands and genocide by mass rape that occurred during and after Culloden in 1745. No British regiment to this day will admit in their regimental history to participating in the battle, and no regiment has attached battle honors from Culloden to their regimental standard.

    Easier to pretend these things never happened.

  64. 64.

    Svensker

    October 1, 2010 at 11:55 am

    @Bill E Pilgrim:

    The missing the point festival seems to be in full swing

    LOL.

  65. 65.

    celticdragonchick

    October 1, 2010 at 11:56 am

    @Mnemosyne:

    That sounds like the two Brits who stole Rosalind Franklin’s work and got the Nobel Prize for ‘discovering’ DNA.

  66. 66.

    Alex

    October 1, 2010 at 11:59 am

    @Bob In Pacifica:
    The only problem with this is that we know (from historic samples and from DNA analysis) that HIV was circulating in west Africa long before then. The virus’s evolutionary divergence from its ancestors has been dated to 1931 by Korber et al., with 95% confidence that it was between 1915 and 1941. Other studies (cited in that one) have localised the event to south-eastern Cameroon. Also, we know that by 1960, the virus had developed significant genetic diversity in the wild, which argues that it was circulating fairly widely.

    There is an interesting paper here on the role of French rule in it – railway workers eating more monkeys, major vaccination campaigns with dodgy sterilisation protocols – and there’s a theory that the availability of cheap syringes starting in the 1950s played a role.

  67. 67.

    DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.

    October 1, 2010 at 12:02 pm

    @wilfred:

    I might have laid the snark on too heavy, I mean that the mythical Reagan who never raised taxes or withdrew soldiers from Lebanon, that guy never would have apologized for it.

  68. 68.

    celticdragonchick

    October 1, 2010 at 12:02 pm

    @Bill E Pilgrim:

    Reagan would likely make a vague statement of regret while approving a big package of military aid with some older jet fighters, a couple of 1950’s frigates and lots of M-16s to get them to shut up about it and get back to hunting for commies in the jungle.

  69. 69.

    daveNYC

    October 1, 2010 at 12:06 pm

    I was like “WTF? They never heard of the Tuskeegee Experiment?” Then I realized that the Tuskeegee Experiment was done on us Colored folk, so no one gave/gives a damn.

    They probably gave 3/5s of a damn.

  70. 70.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    October 1, 2010 at 12:07 pm

    @celticdragonchick:

    Easier to pretend these things never happened.

    Isn’t that the story of most of American history.

  71. 71.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    October 1, 2010 at 12:08 pm

    @DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.: Maybe use the /Colbert tag next time.

  72. 72.

    celticdragonchick

    October 1, 2010 at 12:08 pm

    @Belafon (formerly anonevent):

    yep.

    We are dealing with that right now in my History and Social Memory class at Guilford College.

  73. 73.

    Brachiator

    October 1, 2010 at 12:14 pm

    @Bill E Pilgrim:
    RE: This isn’t shit that you can lay on Republicans

    The missing the point festival seems to be in full swing.

    I said that the snarky reference to Reagan was offensive, stupid and trivializing. If anyone missed my point, it’s you. I get this: ” ‘Boy this will really piss them off and give fodder for that sort of thing’ is how I took DougJ’s comments.” I just think it’s the least interesting way of looking at the story DougJ linked to.

    I really don’t give a shit, right here, right now, in this particular thread, about Republican attacks on Obama. I don’t give a shit about the inevitable crap that the GOP will spew about Obama’s offer of an apology.

    Nor do I give a shit about the apology offered.

    Nothing trivialized what happened nor claimed that it’s Republicans who were responsible for it.

    You trivialize it the second you start speculating about the inevitable, and pointless political theater that might erupt in response to the proffered apology.

  74. 74.

    Sloegin

    October 1, 2010 at 12:17 pm

    What a horrible thing to lay on Ronnie Raygun. He’d never approve of infecting people with the clap.

    He preferred right-wing Death Squads that infected people with rifled slugs.

  75. 75.

    Sentient Puddle

    October 1, 2010 at 12:19 pm

    This sounds like it’s a hop, skip and a jump away from the back story for Dead Rising. Time to barricade myself into a shopping mall.

  76. 76.

    Bender

    October 1, 2010 at 12:20 pm

    This blog reeks of anti-science flat-earthers.

    If you faith-healing root-chewers want to advance into the 20th century anytime soon, you should embrace the fact that Scientists are infallible god-men who do what they do for the Greater Good that you can’t possibly understand, what with your knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing dead-eyed mook faces.

    The Scientists let prisoners and psychos have sex with prossies! Sure, they were syphilis-infected prossies, but still! And they treated the criminals/nutjobs with penicillin right after they got the syphilis! Most of them were probably cured. All were no doubt grateful for the whore-sex. The Scientists even got permission first… from the warden and shrinks, if not from the subjects johns.

    Sometimes, in the name of Science, great men must “break a few eggs” by using unwitting test subjects or falsifying data to get big grants. That’s a given. But to vilify the Scientists of the Greatest Goddamn Generation for trying to find new ways to heal the sick is backwoods, corncob-pipe, marry-your-cousin Regressivism.

    Apologize? Hillary should say, “Penicillin has saved 1 billion lives. You’re welcome, pussies.”

  77. 77.

    DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.

    October 1, 2010 at 12:21 pm

    @Brachiator:

    I’m see where you’re coming from, but as far as I’m concerned, the US has all sorts of awful things, often on a much larger scale than this, and the “never apologize” shit we hear from Republicans sickens me. I think this is a good example of why the “never apologize” shit is stupid.

    The US is never going to apologize for installing Pinochet, for example.

  78. 78.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    October 1, 2010 at 12:22 pm

    @Brachiator: Right. So if you got the snark, then where does “You can’t lay this on the Republicans” come from? Or what does it mean?

    No one trivialized what happened back then by trying to claim it was Republicans who did it, was my point. Since I was addressing your claim to that effect.

    Being snarky about the Republicans happens sort of a lot around here and doesn’t have to “trivialize” the serious things at stake as a result. If you “don’t give a shit about it in this thread” or you think it should suddenly be shameful or forbidden at your whim, I’d suggest you get the fuck over yourself.

  79. 79.

    aimai

    October 1, 2010 at 12:23 pm

    @daveNYC:

    This is very good, but probably putting it too high. I’d say that if any young reporters have “heard” of the Tuskegee Experiment–presuming they receive all their historical information from the ambient air and not through serious study, they probably have it confused with the Tuskegee Airmen and so think the “experiment” was letting black men fly planes, or something.

    What is hiding in plain sight in our country, like the specific historical incidents that happened to non white, or female, or pre-white Irish, or anyone else that the mainstream doesn’t care about, is huge. Talk to an ordinarily educated white person about “sundown towns” or the reality of jim crow, or lynching, or mass race riots/burnings/evictions and they are just staggered. If it wasn’t soft enough to appear in a Hallmark TV show in the sixties and seventies then it just didn’t happen as far as most white people are concerned.

    aimai

  80. 80.

    WereBear

    October 1, 2010 at 12:24 pm

    @PigInZen: We experimented on Canadians, too.

    And got sued for it.

  81. 81.

    arguingwithsignposts

    October 1, 2010 at 12:26 pm

    @Bender:
    For an unreconstructed troll, that wasn’t half bad, Commander Prothero.

  82. 82.

    Bruce (formerly Steve S.)

    October 1, 2010 at 12:27 pm

    @Brachiator:

    You trivialize it the second you start speculating about the inevitable, and pointless political theater that might erupt

    You realize, of course, that 98% of Balloon Juice would have to be flushed down the toilet by this standard.

  83. 83.

    Brachiator

    October 1, 2010 at 12:29 pm

    @Belafon (formerly anonevent): RE: Easier to pretend these things never happened.

    Isn’t that the story of most of American human history.

    Fixt. The Japanese government, for example, is still dragging its feet over acknowledging the despicable atrocities committed in China during World War II, or the use of “comfort women,” etc. Some Cambodians, even civilians, not just government officials, find it impossible to even believe the Khmer Rouge atrocities.

  84. 84.

    arguingwithsignposts

    October 1, 2010 at 12:34 pm

    @Brachiator:
    If we are to believe some people, 6 million people in Europe didn’t die in a systematic, industrialized genocide during WWII, either.

    (yes, I Godwinned)

  85. 85.

    Linda Binda

    October 1, 2010 at 12:45 pm

    Why do I get the feeling that if DougJ used this to bash the Democrats, Flugelhorn would have no problem with this post?

    “Eugenics progressives” and all the other nonsense in that post tells me he’s just mad DougJ brought up Reagan.

    You tell me what: any resident right-winger of the day should denounce all the times Obama’s been compared to Hitler and been called a Kenyan anti-colonialist and other such (racist) nonsense, and prove that they’re capable of denouncing such amongst their friends, and I’ll actually start to feel bad about Reagan being dissed like this for once. And you have to do this without bringing up Bush. It’s a challenge, but I’m sure you can do it if you try.

    Why should ‘progressives,’ ‘liberals’ or anyone left of Mussolini have to hold themselves to higher standards than the right-wing ever has to? Why do I have to tolerate assholes thinking I’m evil incarnate because I think paying $1000 for an 20-mile ambulance ride or for college at all is stupid?

    It’s a pity that whatever point this post had will be lost because some whiny pundit will use this to prove the “evilness” of liberals, all ’cause DougJ brought up St. Reagan. Give me a break, all of you.

  86. 86.

    Brachiator

    October 1, 2010 at 12:52 pm

    @DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.:

    I’m see where you’re coming from, but as far as I’m concerned, the US has all sorts of awful things, often on a much larger scale than this, and the “never apologize” shit we hear from Republicans sickens me. I think this is a good example of why the “never apologize” shit is stupid.
    The US is never going to apologize for installing Pinochet, for example.

    I’m glad you got my point, and this was one reason why I wanted to emphasize my thanks that you provided the link.

    And I agree that the “never apologize” shit is stupid. But I also think it important not to do evil shit in the first freaking place.

    And this is why the story got to me this early in the morning (out here in California). I don’t know the political ideology of the scientists who committed this atrocity, how they voted, what political parties they may have joined, but I do see the stunted racial assumptions they carried and how it influenced their actions.

    And while we assume that we (or most of us) are all better than that now, the cautionary tale is how easy it is to sacrifice the weak and the helpless for the greater good. That somebody else may come around later and apologize for it is cold comfort.

    Also, I think it especially heinous when doctors and scientists do evil, particularly when they take advantage of the powerless.

  87. 87.

    Chris Grrr

    October 1, 2010 at 1:49 pm

    From the MSN story:

    …Dr. John C. Cutler, a PHS physician who would later be part of the Syphilis Study in Alabama in the 1960s and continue to defend it two decades after it ended in the 1990s…

    That man does not seem to have a Wikipedia entry, but he should be infamous forever – as should Surgeon General Thomas Parran:

    “You know, we couldn’t do such an experiment in this country.”

    It’s more and more embarrassing to remember my old delusion that American tax dollars always accomplished good things in the world.

  88. 88.

    Brachiator

    October 1, 2010 at 1:57 pm

    @Bruce (formerly Steve S.): RE: You trivialize it the second you start speculating about the inevitable, and pointless political theater that might erupt

    You realize, of course, that 98% of Balloon Juice would have to be flushed down the toilet by this standard.

    Nah, more like 62%, especially when you adjust for endlessly pointless posts about Obama’s failure to include the public option in health care reform.

  89. 89.

    Mnemosyne

    October 1, 2010 at 2:17 pm

    @Chris Grrr:

    I didn’t see that in the MSNBC story that TPM linked to — was it a different story? It would be really interesting to discover that the same guy who set up the Tuskegee disaster did the same thing in Guatemala. If so, it makes you wonder what other lovely little “experiments” he set up over the years with unsuspecting people that are buried in the archives.

    And for people who haven’t heard of it and might not be entirely clear on why the Tuskegee Experiment was so evil, the whole point was that there was a cure for syphilis that they either didn’t provide to the patients (letting them continue to think the disease was incurable) or, even worse, gave them a placebo and let them think it was a cure even though that wasn’t what the experiment was testing (it was already well-known and well-demonstrated that penicillin cured syphilis). It really was just an opportunity to use impoverished African-Americans as two-legged lab rats so scientists could observe and document untreated syphilis cases up close, and it ran well into the 1970s, FFS.

    The award-winning HBO movie is called Miss Evers’ Boys (with Alfre Woodard and Laurence Fishburne) if anyone is interested.

  90. 90.

    Chris Grrr

    October 1, 2010 at 2:24 pm

    @Mnemosyne:

    Sorry. I goofed. Those quotes are attributed to an article by Susan Reverby by The Raw Story…

  91. 91.

    Bruce (formerly Steve S.)

    October 1, 2010 at 2:27 pm

    @Brachiator:

    One of the arguments for “just pass the damn bill” was that, even if imperfect, it would prevent some excess of deaths in the future. Surely, a public option would have been useful in getting even more people into the system, hence preventing even more excess deaths. Not sure why you are trivializing the inevitable premature deaths of these people by bringing up the political war over the PO.

  92. 92.

    Corner Stone

    October 1, 2010 at 2:33 pm

    @Bruce (formerly Steve S.): It’s another way of saying “firebagger”.

    And I am seeing what was done there.

  93. 93.

    Brachiator

    October 1, 2010 at 3:17 pm

    @Bruce (formerly Steve S.):

    One of the arguments for “just pass the damn bill” was that, even if imperfect, it would prevent some excess of deaths in the future. Surely, a public option would have been useful in getting even more people into the system, hence preventing even more excess deaths.

    It makes sense to me to work on including a public option in future health care reform legislation. Or even something that goes further than the public option. It makes no sense to me to continue to blather on about what would have been, could have been, or might have been done when the bills were being fought over.

  94. 94.

    Mnemosyne

    October 1, 2010 at 3:22 pm

    @Chris Grrr:

    Ah, okay. I hope some enterprising social historian starts digging into the archives, because it sounds like Cutler could be Patient Zero in some very, very bad actions by scientists.

  95. 95.

    Mnemosyne

    October 1, 2010 at 3:25 pm

    @Brachiator:

    It makes sense to me to work on including a public option in future health care reform legislation. Or even something that goes further than the public option.

    Apparently we can’t have a public option for another generation and the opportunity is lost for at least 30 more years because shut up, that’s why. I have no idea why people seem to think this since it’s just a matter of adding another option (that word again!) to the existing exchanges, but it seems to be a pretty hardened belief in some circles.

    I don’t think that Bruce believes this, but I’ve seen the claim by kwAwk and others in the comments here and I still haven’t gotten a sensible explanation why they think this.

  96. 96.

    Brachiator

    October 1, 2010 at 3:55 pm

    @Mnemosyne:

    It would be really interesting to discover that the same guy who set up the Tuskegee disaster did the same thing in Guatemala. If so, it makes you wonder what other lovely little “experiments” he set up over the years with unsuspecting people that are buried in the archives.

    The larger issue, for me, is that American doctors representing the American Public Health Service deliberately treated human beings like lab rats, and that they absolutely believed that they could do this with impunity to nonwhites.

    This also touches on the other dirty little secret of the history of medicine in America, that is, the systematic mistreatment of black and poor people in order to make medical discoveries. Let me introduce you to the father of Gynecology, J Marion Sims (1813-1884) .

    J. Marion Sims has been called The Father of Gynecology, and was the first physician to have a statue erected in his honor in the United States. During his lifetime he treated European royalty and was rivaled only by William Osler in his reputation abroad. He is credited with originating the first successful treatment for vesicovaginal fistula, a common and odious condition in the mid-1800s. He made great strides in introducing antisepsis into the surgical modus operandi. Every day physicians refer to the Sims position and use the Sims speculum, eponymic tributes to his accomplishments.

    But this is what his reputation is built upon:

    Sims developed a valuable technique for vesicovaginal repair by experimenting on slave women, and other surgical techniques by experimenting on poor and indigent women in New York.
    __
    From 1845 to 1849 the “Father of Gynaecology” kept seven slave women in a backwoods ‘hospital’ where he operated on them, without anaesthesia, up to 30 times each. In his own words the operations were so painful that “none but a woman could have borne them.” (Scully 1980:42)
    __
    In order to keep the women biddable, and to ameliorate the pain, he addicted them to opium.

  97. 97.

    Person of Choler

    October 1, 2010 at 5:47 pm

    Hmmm. More than 60 years ago. That would be pre-1950. Sounds like sometime in the Roosevelt or Truman years. Blast and damn these heartless Rethuglic… oh, wait.

  98. 98.

    Bill Murray

    October 1, 2010 at 5:49 pm

    @Brachiator: I think Dr. Joseph Warren would have had at least one of the statues (the one at Bunker Hill) erected in his honor before Sims. Of course, this wasn’t for his physician skills, but for his being a Patriot and martyr before and during the American Revolution.

    Also, does this apology mean around 2016 or so the US will apologize to Guatemala for Operation PBSuccess and the related PBFortune and PBHistory?

  99. 99.

    Bill Murray

    October 1, 2010 at 5:52 pm

    @Person of Choler: It’s good that you took the time to read the comets

  100. 100.

    Bill Murray

    October 1, 2010 at 6:09 pm

    @Bill Murray: or the comments even

  101. 101.

    Person of Choler

    October 1, 2010 at 6:18 pm

    @Bill Murray:

    Merely wanted to disguise myself by responding as a left winger would.

  102. 102.

    Mnemosyne

    October 1, 2010 at 6:20 pm

    @Person of Choler:

    Merely wanted to disguise myself by responding as my imagined caricature of a left winger would.

    Fix’t.

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