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

Editorials:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x624629

[naaman fletcher]

1. I don't get it,

It's an insult because the commission to look into the medical experiments did not also comment on an event that happened 40 years after the event it was charged with looking into?

[Judi Lynn]

2. Why not break down and read the article? It's not that hard to grasp. n/t

[Peace Patriot]

3. In the "logic" of the right, this was an "isolated incident" in U.S. policy

and happened long ago--and that includes the "logic" of the Democratic Party rightwing leaders (who are so grievously out of touch with, and traitorous toward, the vast poor/middle class, progressive majority in this country). The writer then brings U.S. policy forward 40 years to the U.S.-supported slaughter of TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND Mayan villagers under the Reagan Horrors, and forward again to Honduras and the death squad murders that are occurring there NOW, due to U.S. (Obama) support of a coup regime. And he should have brought it forward to Colombia as well, over the last decade, where tens of thousands of trade unionists, human rights workers, teachers, community activists, peasant farmer organizers, Indigenous leaders, journalists and others have been slaughtered by the Colombian military in conspiracy with the mafia-like, U.S. supported government, and with the U.S. military on the ground in Colombia and $7 BILLION in U.S. military aid.

It is the policy of the U.S. government to KILL Latin American Leftists, and to experiment on Latin Americans in all sorts of ways--from injecting them with syphilis in the 1940s, to spraying them with toxic herbicides and neo-liberalism in the 1990s, to using them to try out Pentagon/USAID "pacification" programs "for use in Iraq and Afghanistan" in the 2000s (Colombia), and including experimenting on them with how the U.S. "war on drugs" can be used to destroy society with militarism, murder and mayhem, to better prepare a slave labor workforce and resource theft for U.S. corporations and war profiteers, TODAY.

I understand this writer's outrage. The Obama administration has the problem of a united South America seeking independence, at long last, from U.S. bullying, interference and atrocities, and working together cooperatively for social justice and prosperity for Latin America, and this awesome and historic leftist democracy movement is heading NORTH--into Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras (until the U.S.-supported coup), into Mexico next and across OUR VERY BORDER, with notions of real democracy, fairness and justice.

One of the coup generals in Honduras STATED that their coup was intended "to prevent communism from Venezuela reaching the United States"! (--quoted in a report on the coup by the Zelaya government-in-exile). "Communism," in this general's mind, is equivalent to: universal free medical care, universal free education, decent wages, honest, transparent elections, empowerment of the poor majority, kicking multinational corporations in the butt to force them to take social responsibility, making the rich pay their taxes and other aspects of good and fair and representative government. The right imagines itself to be a giant statue--a Colossus of Rhodes--astride Central America blockading these good things from reaching our shores.

LOL!

And the Obama administration must, in THIS NEW CONTEXT, advocate for the interests of multinational corporations, banksters and war profiteers. This is a very tricky business. South American leaders now have the clout to quietly tell him to go jump in a lake (as I think happened when he recently visited Brazil's new Leftist president, Dilma Rousseff). Ergo, the U.S. has a new need to APPEAR TO BE favoring truth, justice and democracy. Thus, a commission to look into one of the oldest of U.S. atrocities in LatAm while ignoring everything between then and now, including CURRENT atrocities. Indeed, the Obama administration is not only ignoring current and recent atrocities, they are actively protecting the Mob Boss of Colombia, former 'president' Alvaro Uribe, who ran Colombia like Murder, Inc. with FULL U.S./Bush Junta support.

It's true that the Bush Junta wouldn't have bothered with this commission. They were utterly contemptuous of public opinion, here or in LatAm. Indeed, it seems evident to me that they were planning a second oil war, in South America--war being their only policy. It takes the Democratic Party's rightwing leaders to suss out more effective ways to serve our corporate/war profiteer masters--for instance, pretending to care about the horrible deaths of a relatively few, long dead Guatemalans. I don't blame this pretense on the commission itself (except for the slimy wording which was likely imposed by the chairman). I imagine that most participants thought they were doing good. It is the slavish attitude of our party leaders--toward Reagan, for one thing (who oversaw slaughters in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and other places)--and their slavish attitude toward Bush Junta war criminals, including Bush Junta war crimes in Colombia, and their blatant service to corporate and wealthy interests in Honduras, in Haiti and throughout LatAm, that is so obvious and so wrong. They are merely "scoring Brownie Points" with this commission. They couldn't care less about these old atrocities or the ones that happened LAST WEEK in the U.S. client states of Colombia and Honduras.

So, my feeling about this commission is that I'm glad to see these atrocities brought to light, even with slimy wording. But, like Mr. O'Shaughnessy, the writer of this article, I ALSO understand that it is part of a Washington P.R. campaign to slime the way for U.S. multinational corporations, banksters and war profiteers back into South America, for reconquest, and to maintain the U.S. "circle the wagons" region--Central America/the Caribbean-- against the leftist democracy movement that is heading north.

That's what Honduras was all about. That's what Haiti has been all about. That's what U.S. policy on Colombia and Venezuela (southern edge of the "circle the wagons" region) has been all about. And that's what THIS is all about. Maintaining empire and reconquest.

-----------------

(No edits.)

[EFerrari]

6. In the logic of the neo cons and neo libs, history is a series of isolated incidents.

Not even a series but a collection.

[Peace Patriot]

4. K&R--to counter the stupido who unrec'ed this thread! nt

[EFerrari]

5. Invisible rec.

[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

[Judi Lynn]

8. Guatemala, the United States’ Field Laboratory

Guatemala, the United States’ Field Laboratory
By Jacobo G. García
Translated By Camden Luxford
31 August 2011
Edited by Jen­nifer Pietropaoli

Spain - El Mundo - Original Article (Spanish)

The first objective was, apparently, to find a poor country without public institutions or health services where a man with an American accent, white coat and stethoscope around his neck could work freely under the pretense that he’d arrived to heal. It was the 1940s, and Guatemala was the ideal location.

One by one, prostitutes were chosen, preferably those with many clients and few scruples. Later, the soldiers, the poor, orphans, the mentally ill, the indigenous, and so on. Hundreds and hundreds of people became victims of an experiment designed in U.S. laboratories and tested among the lowest and most miserable of Guatemalans.

In total, as was publicized Monday, 1,300 people were infected between 1946 and 1948 in a massive experiment. Behind this experiment was the U.S. Department of Health and the sinister Dr. John Cutler, who was also famous in Alabama for having used hundreds of black men as guinea pigs in the so-called “Tuskegee” experiment, in which more than a hundred people died.

“A Monstrosity,” declared Tuesday’s headlines in Guatemala’s most important newspaper, Prensa Libre, on being informed of the details of the experiment in which 5,500 patients were deceived, 1,300 infected, 83 dead. The women were injected with syphilis and gonorrhea in the arm; the men, in the penis.

More:
http://watchingamerica.com/News/119045/guatemala-the-united-states-field-laboratory/