Odd that the New Atheists hold science up as the summum bonum of human existence - and castigate religion for "poisoning" everything - when science left to its own devices will engage in such human experimentation as infecting unconsenting Guatemalans with sexually transmitted diseases to see what happens.
The answer is probably, "they get really sick and die."
According to this article, Secretary of State Clinton has apologized:
U.S. scientific researchers infected hundreds of Guatemalan mental patients with sexually transmitted diseases from 1946 to 1948 -- a practice that only came recently to light thanks to the work of an academic researcher. On Friday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius issued a formal apology to the Central American nation, and to Guatemalan residents of the United States.If you're like me, you are thinking something like, "WTF? Guatemala? Couldn't we experiment on people with Spanish surnames who are under American jurisdiction, like the Guamanians?" Apparently, though, the Guatemalan government was totally involved:
"It was done in conjunction with the Guatemalan government," Reverby told The Upshot in a phone interview Friday morning. "They had permission from the Guatemalan government."Good job of protecting your people, Gautemalan government.
Not to make a partisan point but wasn't Harry S Truman, a Democrat, the president between 1946 and 1948. And isn't it the Democrats who are telling us that the notion that they would set up "Death Panels" as part of socialized medicine unmitigated hooey?
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