Posted on 01/10/2012 6:02:25 PM PST by Robert Drobot
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration argued Monday that Guatemalans unknowingly exposed to sexually transmitted diseases by U.S. researchers in the 1940s cannot sue the United States, no matter how shameful and unethical the studies were.
In its first response to a lawsuit filed on behalf of the experiment's subjects, the Justice Department late Monday said sovereign immunity protects federal health officials from litigation stemming from the study. The experiment conducted in the 1940s exposed Guatemalan prostitutes, prisoners, mental patients and soldiers with STDs to test the effects of penicillin. The studies were conducted without the test subjects' consent.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Wasn’t Tuskegee mostly a black led and administered program?
What’s that got to do with the price of tea in China?
It was done with a democrat in the white house. If it was bad, it didn’t happen.
More and more he is acting like Venezuela's dictator Chavez.
EVIL.
Incredible. Secretly infecting people to conduct a study. How do you get immunity from THAT?
There is only one way,, if you believe the State is everything, and the induvidual is nothing.
A long way from Pasteur, conducting the risky test on himself.
Now we have a black man in the White House, and additional STD experiments come to light, and the black president essentially says, "Not my problem. You folks have just got to deal with it."
I'm thinking -- call me crazy -- I'm thinking that Obama will get away with a cavalier attitude here, but that George W. Bush would have been pilloried for such behavior.
Somehow I got the impression you knew something about, or had an interest in Tuskegee, a simple ‘I don’t know’ would have been a less hostile response.
Thanks for that information, Robert.
My interpretation is that Eric the Racist Red is justifying future actions to kill honkies, especially old people.
We are getting close to the Old North bridge again.
What is going on here? Obama admin get to show we are evil, (which this is)yet they cannot sue. This coming from this admin?
Hey Ansel12! From what I read, the Public Health Service ran the Tuskeegee experiment. The participants in the study had the STD but were told it was a “blood” study. They were offered free health care and funeral services. The Public Health Service is now the Department of Health and Human Services. The main difference between these two cases is that it appears the Tuskeegee men contracted the disease on their own vs. the government deliberately infecting them for study. Both wrong, of course.
And the amusing thing is that the study was founded and carried out by “progressives”. “Progressivism” was overwhelmingly dominant in pre-war America. And it wasn’t even a government study initially. It was started by a private charity funded by the former chairman of Sears Roebuck, a Progressive Jew named Julius Rosenwald. Excerpt from Wikipedia:
Julius Rosenwald, an American clothier, became part-owner ofSears, Roebuck and Company in 1895, and eventually served as its president from 1908 to 1922, and chairman of its Board of Directors until his death in 1932. He became interested in social issues, especially education for African Americans, and provided funding through Dr. Booker T. Washington of the Tuskegee Institute, a historically black college (HBCU), prior to founding the fund....
The Rosenwald Fund was also one of the original backers of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. With support from the Rosenwald Fund, an ambitious program had begun to improve the health of African Americans in US southern states in 1928. Emphasis was on treating people with syphilis, then found at a high rate in poor African-American communities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenwald_Fund
No, Dr. Cutler isn't quite in that category.
Now, the morality of allowing prisoners to have unprotected sex with prostitutes ~ Hmm ~ then giving them penicillin.
I hope you are aware that penicillin was a new drug ~ it wasn't until just before the D-Day invasion that the United States had LARGE SCALE PRODUCTION. That's 1943!
When initially used it was given to wounded troops without concern for proper dosage levels.
The Tuskegee Experiment started in 1930 ~ and ran for 40 years. There the "subjects" got the syphilis on their own. Now, to the morality of the initial study ~ if penicillin hadn't been invented these people would have all died of syphilis. Since it was invented and administered to them many of them lived far longer than they would have otherwise.
It was a serious error to have NOT given them penicillin when that treatment became available ~ which, for most Americans really wasn't until about 1948.
Early penicillin had risks. Even after many years of refinement of processes and evaluation of dosages and other risks, about 1% may have side effects from administration of penicillin.
The percentage used to be higher. I almost died from a penicillin shot at the age of 4. That was back in the bad old days. "They" finally developed a variety about 10 years ago that I could tolerate without risking death.
Which is why I've always paid close attention to penicillin developments.
BTW, those adverse effects would have happened to many of the folks in the Tuskegee Experiment ~ they would simply have died EARLIER from the penicillin.
The Guatemalan experiment is a bit different. The study began before penicillin was a refined medication and there would have been deaths and injuries that resulted from its use. Assisting prisoners in the acquisition of STDs from prostitutes ~ something they probably would have arranged on their own since it is typically the case in Latin America that conjugal visits are lawful, is probably questionable.
This looks like a double-blind study where the test subjects were not aware of the course of treatment, nor were they surprised at other problems they might have had ~ although when the prisoners were given penicillin and they no longer suffered from gonorrhea (e.g.) they might have imagined that to be a miracle.
It is said of Thucydides, the great ancient Greek historian, that his recording of human events during the Peloponnesian War is ‘marked by accuracy and a studied impartiality’.
Tuskegee re-examined by Richard A Shweder
A cultural anthropologist offers a counter-narrative to the infamous story of US government scientists allowing black men to suffer from untreated syphilis.
http://www.spiked-online.com/articles/0000000CA34A.htm
No, the U.S. Public Health Service is a sub-agency of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Link post 15- When they examined 410 syphilitic blacks for possible inclusion in the study, they found many were in the early, infectious stage, and rejected them as candidates. They turned over no fewer than 178 for the standard arsenic treatment, and kept 140 for the study. They then checked up on these men at rather lengthy intervals—in 1938, 1948, 1952, and 1963—giving them full physical examinations, and treating them for any disease other than syphilis.
All I am saying is that if the USA will play the sovereignty card against others, they will certainly play it against you if something happens to you from a “mandatory” vaccine or medicine they say you have to take.
They’ve already given drug companies immunity from prosecution in emergencies or if they need something whipped up quickly. They give docs immunity too. You’re screwed if you get messed up. Always think twice about taking something that has known issues or hasn’t been tested or produced under normal standards and conditions.
Don’t know about “led” but it was done under the military on black pilots. Syphilis. Left untreated to see how the disease progresses and what happens.
Bottom line is the USA govt does not give two sh1ts about your health. Nobody cares about you as much as you do. As you are your own best first responder, you have to also be the one that care the most about what goes into your body.
If not, you will wind up messed up, be left in the shuffle, and have no legal recompense. If it’s something that makes you contagious and it’s dangerous and they can’t fix it, they would have no compulsion in taking extreme measures to wipe it out to save the rest of them.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.