Last week the United States government gave an apology to Guatemala for purposely injecting Guatemalan citizens with syphilis in the 1940s. I was aghast when I heard that this occurred. Why? Why was the U.S. federal government wasting its time, resources and money with giving Central Americans STDs? So it turns out that they did all of this to test penicillin. Was there not people already carrying the disease in our own country that probably would have gladly volunteered to test the drug if it meant curing this ailment? That makes more sense to me. An article I read said that Guatemala is considering whether to press for crimes against humanity or not, and why wouldn't they? Chances are the scientists that did this are either dead or very close to it. So, unfortunately they probably won't get real justice for this heinous act. They got an apology, and let's face it they are lucky to get that.
I don't know why people think that our government is infallible and pure and always such a great thing. Sure this isn't a common thing that we hear in the news. However, we don't know everything that goes on. Governments keep secrets because they like to give the appearance of being this grand and generous entity. This is a reason why the press has to do its surveillance duties and be a watchdog for the citizens. Governments lie and do evil things. Don't kid yourself. There is this example with Guatemala, the Tuskegee experiment where they did the same thing to our own citizens, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, Watergate, Iran-Contra, Ruby Ridge, the WMD justification for Iraq, and the list could go on. I'm pretty sure it'd be naive to think that this crap might end one day, but I certainly have my doubts of that. I only can only hope that the media will continue to try and expose these things then maybe one day things like this will cease. Ha, yeah right.
I heard about this apology too. That is so horrifying! And why bring it up now? When no one has heard about it or knew about it? Why bring it to media's attention and cause another negative spot light on the country? Every country has done horrible and unspeakable things, but we try to sweep it under the rug and forget about it. Learn from it and move on. I don't think the President should have gone public with this information. We could face serious consequences for it right now.
ReplyDeleteHA!!! You think this is bad. Hell, they always do this. The government waits until almost the majority of those effected are dead or old enough so as not to have the newer generations care. Its America though, and our records have never been clean. Just you wait in 20 years, we will have to issue an apology to Cambodia for the bombings in the 70's, again if we already have because we left out some details.
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