If you listen to folks in today's Tea Party movement, Pres. Obama is coming for their guns and trying to turn America into a socialist state. Liberals charged the previous administration with a whole host of sins. Regardless of a person's political perspective, many believe that our government has gone off the rails within the last 20 years.
What I think a lot people miss is that our government has been off the rails for, at least, the last century! So, I was not surprised at all to learn that people working under the auspices of our government infected Guatemalans with syphilis without their knowledge.
Consequently, while I certainly would not argue that the majority of such episodes have and continue to impact minority communities and populations disproportionately, it seems just as likely to me that too many bigwigs in the upper echelons of power simply have a callous disregard for the lives of average people, in general!
What I think a lot people miss is that our government has been off the rails for, at least, the last century! So, I was not surprised at all to learn that people working under the auspices of our government infected Guatemalans with syphilis without their knowledge.
The U.S. government-funded experiment, which ran from 1946 to 1948, was discovered by a Wellesley College medical historian. It apparently was conducted to test if penicillin, then relatively new, could prevent infection with sexually transmitted diseases. The study came up with no useful information and was hidden for decades.A jaded person might look at this story and think that our government has it out for people of color. Not so fast, I say. During the 1940s & 50s, the people running the Hanford Nuclear site in central Washington regularly released contaminants into the atmosphere to see how it would effect area residents who are predominantly white. (There are so many more examples of this that I could fill thousands of blogs entries and barely scratch the surface!)
The government researcher who led the work in Guatemala also was involved in this country's infamous Tuskegee experiment, where from 1932 to 1972 scientists tracked 600 black men in Alabama who had syphilis but didn't know it, without ever offering them treatment...
Consequently, while I certainly would not argue that the majority of such episodes have and continue to impact minority communities and populations disproportionately, it seems just as likely to me that too many bigwigs in the upper echelons of power simply have a callous disregard for the lives of average people, in general!
Yes sadly it's true, that the U.S. government has a long history of funding and conducting harmful experiments on people without their prior knowledge or consent.
ReplyDeleteHere's a Wikipedia page that lists some of them Unethical human experimentation in the United States. Although if you did some extensive research on it, you very well may find that many other countries have done similar experiments as well.
What I think it shows though more than anything else, is less of a prejudice against specific races or classes, (although in some cases that certainly was true), but since you'll find that many other harmful experiments have been conducted on a very diverse assortment of people coming from all backgrounds, races and classes, it shows more so an overall disrespect and callous disregard for life and liberty in general; whether that be human life, animal life, plant life or the health of natural ecosystems.
Another thing you'll find is that these types of things tend to not be disclosed until many years later, long after perhaps the original people involved who may have been directly implicated and held accountable, are dead. So they basically get away with it, with a mere apology. Maybe a token cash settlement, but overall they get away with it. Makes you wonder how many harmful experiments could be going on right now, that you'll never hear about until long after the fact, long after the harm is done, maybe 40 or 50 years later down the road.
Thanks for the link. The point in your last paragraph is spot on! In this vein, I wonder what we will find out 40 or 50 years from now about 9/11.
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