US conducts human experiments, sparking outcry
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E-mail Xinhua, May 25, 2012
The revelation of the history of human experiments conducted in the United States is yet another scandal sparking public outcry around the world after the prisoner abuse scandal, said a report titled "the Human Rights Record of the United States in 2011."
The report was released by State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China in response to the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2011 issued by the U.S. Department of State on Thursday.
The report cited a news report on the UK-based newspaper Telegraph that from 1946-1948, a U.S. government-paid medical experiment program had made nearly 5,500 people in Guatemala subjected to diagnostic testing, and the researchers deliberately exposed more than 1,300 people, including soldiers, prostitutes, prisoners and mental patients, to syphilis and other venereal diseases. Seven women with epilepsy were injected with syphilis below the back of the skull, and a female syphilis patient with a terminal illness was infected with gonorrhea in her eyes and elsewhere. These experiments had caused over 80 deaths.
An article on a U.S.-based journalistic website said that "these revelations are only the latest in an ongoing series of scandals regarding government illegal and unethical experimentation" and that "there are plenty of other underreported and important stories out there on the terrible scandal that has been U.S. illegal experimentation." The article said that the list of such illegal experiments is quite long, including government radiation experiments, human mind control (also known as MKULTRA) experiments and the CIA and DoD (Department of Defense) experiments on "enemy combatants" in the "war on terror," according to the report.
The report also said that according to a report of The Hindu, in 1932, the U.S. public health service agency started a study of untreated syphilis in the human body in Alabama. The researchers told the subjects that they were being treated for some ailments, and nearly 400 African-American men were infected with syphilis without informed consent. In fact, the men infected did not receive proper treatment needed. The study lasted until 1972 after media disclosures.
Austrian national TV commented that this was a disgraceful event in the U.S. history and a dark period in U.S. medical ethics, the report added.
