U.S. apologizes for syphilis experiment in Guatemala | Hacker News Reader

U.S. apologizes for syphilis experiment in Guatemala

reuters.com

33 pointsgeorgecmu22 comments

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.

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

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."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_experimentation_in_the_Un...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14...

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

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://www.pitt.planyourlegacy.org/donor-cutler.php

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?

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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]".

Just so we're clear: not even close. The researchers who performed these syphilis experiments were profoundly misguided. But, ultimately they likely had good intentions at heart. Note that this in no way justifies their actions.

Mengele was so sick I won't even attempt to summarize what's written on that wikipedia page.

This is more than just a matter of degree. Please be more careful with your comparisons.

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

Did it help to move medicine science forward?

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

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".

"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.

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.

Do the ends justify the means?

No.

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

Reply on news.ycombinator.com