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STI transmission is a rampant problem and has been for many years. Even today, when the “Is it safe?” question comes up in casual sexual encounters, there’s a base assumption that you’re talking pregnancy, not the herp. If, as a woman, I say, “I take the pill,” it seems like men are perfectly happy to just go for it, to both take me at my word in terms of pregnancy prevention and totally avoid the equally important STI conversation.
There is a risk involved on both ends in those kinds of situations, but there can be an assumption made that consenting adults can make the choice to take every precaution to protect their health.
Fifty years ago, Guatemalan prisoners and mental hospital patients were not so lucky when the U.S. government used them as unsuspecting guinea pigs to conduct research into treatment of STIs including syphilis and gonorrhea.
And it’s taken the government this long—and through some presidential administrations led by men that are often lauded as heroes such as Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy—to issue an apology. Not that the Obama administration deserves any great pat on the back for saying, “I’m sorry” fifty years too late … the story only came out as the result of a women’s studies professor’s research.
Susan Reverby, a women’s studies professor at Wellesley College, published a paper detailing the joint research program between the U.S. and Guatemalan governments. From 1946-1948, doctors enabled men in prison to be infected with syphilis or gonorrhea by allowing prostitutes carrying the disease to visit them. From there, they studied inoculation techniques. The tests, which also involved mental hospital patients, involved about 1,500 subjects, according to the study.
Wow, U.S. government, way to stay classy. I mean, prostitutes? Intentionally giving violent and/or insane men diseases that can exacerbate these problems? And, oh, I don’t know, how about respect for human rights?
But not to worry. The government is very sorry now.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius issued a joint statement Friday apologizing for the program. They said they would launch an investigation into the “specifics” of the study.
“The sexually transmitted disease inoculation study conducted from 1946-1948 in Guatemala was clearly unethical,” they said. “Although these events occurred more than 64 years ago, we are outraged that such reprehensible research could have occurred under the guise of public health.
“We deeply regret that it happened, and we apologize to all the individuals who were affected by such abhorrent research practices,” they said. The conduct exhibited during the study does not represent the values of the United States, or our commitment to human dignity and great respect for the people of Guatemala.”
U.S. officials will convene a committee of independent experts to conduct a “fact finding investigation” and will issue a report on the results, HHS said.
You know, that’s great. Conduct a fact-finding into something you know happened. There’s no absolution for the men who were connived into acquiring STIs, and while they were certainly in prison for a reason, it should not have taken away their basic human rights.
I know that there is a mindset by some that we might as well use prisoners for research since that will at least make them useful and repay their financial debt to society considering the cost of housing a prisoner.
However, consider cryotherapy, a medical technique that is finally becoming more widely used to treat everything from surgical sites to bone tumors after a long period of being primarily the domain of dermatology.
Why? Because the foundation of uses cryotherapy has today was based on research conducted by the Nazis on concentration camp victims during World War II and was considered ethically sketchy to use for a long time.
The outbreak of World War II interrupted the development of cryotherapy. More significantly, after the war it became known that the technique of hypothermia was employed by German nazis on prisoners in concentration camps without anesthesia or preparatory treatment, thereby associating cryotherapy with other wartime atrocities. Local cooling was thus limited to external use and was principally employed in the treatment of skin diseases. Due to the limiting factor of instrumentation, cryotherapy of less accessible sites of the human body required further development.
So does that mean that ethically all of the research obtained through those “secret” testings on prisoners and mental patients should be thrown out the window?
While I’m not in any way implying that these prisoners suffered a fraction of what Jewish prisoners suffered during the Holocaust, I think it’s impossible and frankly kind of hypocritical to ignore the painfully clear connection.
Thoughts?