The Dark Side of Science

By Juan Leandro

At least 83 Guatemalans were killed by illegal medical experiments conducted in the Central American country by U.S. scientists in the 1940s, according to a commission investigating these sinister events.

At the same time, it is still unknown and unclear what happened to more than five thousand people who were involved in such practices, of which at least 1300 were intentionally contaminated with venereal diseases, without being informed or their consent requested.

Guatemala’s government has identified only five survivors of these cruel tests, conducted by a medical team led by John Charles Cutler, who already had carried out similar experiments with African descendants in the United States years before.

Both cases were publicly funded through the National Institute of Health, so the responsibility is not of an individual or a small group of scientists who violated the basic rules of ethics, but clearly reached institutional levels.

It is now known that the tests took place in Guatemala between 1946 and 1948, when the Treaty of Nuremberg, forbidding such behavior, had already been signed.

The victims were children without families in orphanages, psychiatric hospital patients, prostitutes, indigenous people and army recruits.

They were put in contact with people infected with syphilis, gonorrhea, and meningitis, among other diseases, or were directly inoculated with pathogenic agents. One group received different experimental treatments at this time while others were subjected to studies of their blood, tissues and organs.

It was a cruel and inhuman behavior, morally reprehensible and disgracefully shameful, according to some members of the Presidential Commission for the Study of American Bioethical Issues created by the White House to investigate these acts.

When the tests ended, the whole team left Guatemala without leaving any report for the authorities, and there was no follow-up care for the victims, who were completely abandoned, because they didn’t even know the nature of the infections they suffered.

The five survivors found by the local government, who now are over 80 years old, as well as their families, will be tested and studies made to determine possible consequences of the experiments.

Guatemalan Vice-President Rafael Espada, responsible for dealing with this case, has not yet said whether some kind of legal action is being prepared to demand U.S. compensation for victims.

Meanwhile, Amy Gutmann, president of the American delegation that presented a preliminary report yesterday on this issue, said that her basic and only obligation is to make a report and make recommendations, not to compensate those affected by the medical experiments conducted more than 60 years ago.

This gloomy fact undoubtedly shows the evil-minded dark side of science, similar to the cruelties perpetrated by the Nazis in Europe, which occur when principles, humanism and ethics give way to interests of some another nature, where the priority for life and welfare are not taken into account.

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