Orellana to the infirmary
Update: I got this partly wrong, because the Guardian article is at least misleading.
Oh.my.god. I didn’t know about this.
Marta Orellana says she was playing with friends at the orphanage when the summons sounded: “Orellana to the infirmary. Orellana to the infirmary.”
Waiting for her were several doctors she had never seen before. Tall men with fair complexions who spoke what she guessed was English, plus a Guatemalan doctor. They had syringes and little bottles.
They ordered her to lie down and open her legs. Embarrassed, she locked her knees together and shook her head. The Guatemalan medic slapped her cheek and she began to cry. “I did what I was told,” she recalls.
And they infected her with syphilis.
It was 1946 and orphans in Guatemala City, along with prisoners, military conscripts and prostitutes, had been selected for a medical experiment which would torment many, and remain secret, for more than six decades.
The US, worried about GIs returning home with sexual diseases, infected an estimated 1,500 Guatemalans with syphilis, gonorrhea and chancroid to test an early antibiotic, penicillin.
Jeezis!
What is there to say?
When some people assert that HIV is a white government plot to kill blacks, one is tempted to dismiss it as paranoid conspiracism. But then one recalls that, within living memory, experiments like Tuskegee and this one took place….
The prosecution of “crimes against humanity” is not limited to things that happen during war, correct? And there is no statute of limitation?
Just asking.
I should probably make clear: I don’t believe AIDS is a govt plot, but the history makes that suspicion seem less like paranoia and more an understandable reaction by people who have a history of getting screwed over.
I tried to post this earlier, and forgot to hit post after preview! This is of a piece with the Tuskegee syphilis trial, started in the 1920’s and carried through to the early 70’s – ended only after a nosy reporter caught wind of it. Further, it is only one more of many very dodgy or outright unethical things done by individual Americans or US government agencies around the time of WW II and after. If you have a strong stomach, go to Wikipedia, medical ethics section, for a compendium that will turn even a strong stomach. There are ample references regarding all of them, to deflect the usual objections that it’s all a left-wing or commie fantasy.
“. . . John Cutler, who led the Guatemala team, acknowledged ethical violations in a 1947 letter, saying: ‘Unless the law winks occasionally, you have no progress in medicine.’
What he said is false. Lack of ethics does not lead to progress of any kind.
What a demonic and worthless investigation. American doctors inoculated with god-narcissism decide who is a human being (themselves) and who isn’t – Black men who are sick, Guatemalan soldiers, prostitutes, and little Guatemalan orphan girls. I imagine that the (I bet Catholic) orphanage that accepted payment in exchange for access to the little girls felt the same way about the orphans’ humanity.
Jesus H Christ. Where is the pissed off god who smites when we need her?
Oh it was a Catholic orphanage all right, Claire – Sisters of Mercy! The article noted that it’s unknown whether they got any kickbacks or not. Maybe they just did it for the fun of the thing.
That little sneer about the law winking made me turn pale with rage – or would have if I hadn’t already been as enraged as I could get. “Winking” for fuck’s sake – about forcing a little girl to spread her legs by hitting her in the face and then infecting her with syphilis! Oh yes wink wink wink, how very amusing.
Eamon, I know what you mean. I have similar arguments with truthers; yeah, the US government has done things just as bad as 9/11, they just didn’t do that PARTICULAR thing. Okay, I can see why that doesn’t sound compelling.
I’ll never be capable of real patriotism. Even the best nations are basically large criminal syndicates.
What is there to say? I think the U.S. government (and the complicit Guatemalan government) should apologize publicly to the victims and pay them a sizable compensation.
To begin with. We are shocked and widely condemn the Japanese and German experiments with prisoners during WWII (even though the Japanese government still denies much). If the US wants to retain at least a shadow of the moral superiority that it so often claims (“they hate us for our freedoms,” anyone?), it should at least man up and own to its own atrocities.
Thank you for posting this, Ms. Benson.
As I am an evil child eater, I’m more appalled by the incompetence. Unless they kept the subjects isolated and properly disposed of every single one after testing, that’s just a stupid way to run a test.
We should be thankful that this experiment was carried out under the benevolent guidance of the Sisters of Charity. The default mode of operation in the Church is to leave such matters in the hands of the Brothers of Buggery, in which case the infection is delivered not through a syringe but via the chancre-encrusted penis of a syphilitic priest. The good Lord is merciful indeed!
We should also (and not ironically this time) be thankful for historians. It was a historian who uncovered this: Susan Reverby, who discovered it while researching Tuskegee.
It would only be appropriate if the medical personnel, their clerical accomplices and whoever else was involved finished up in the Hague. (No statute of limitations I believe.)
But I doubt it will happen.
Hmph. I’m reading Susan Reverby’s article on this
http://www.wellesley.edu/WomenSt/Reverby,%20Normal,%20JPH.pdf
and she says [p 13] the orphanage children were not infected.
Prisoners and mental patients were, so it’s still a filthy business, and if the children were beaten into compliance with blood tests that’s a filthy business, but it looks as if Orellana’s memory is a confabulation.
I’ll email Reverby to ask.
Hmm hmm hmm. The Guardian article doesn’t actually say Orellana was infected. It gives that impression (and I bit, I’m sorry to say) but it doesn’t say it. However the US lawyer who is suing says she has tested positive for syphilis…but that could of course be for other reasons.
Argh, journalism.
Ophelia –
I found details of her testimony odd as well. This claim, from Reverby’s paper, seems to contradict it…
I’m not in a position to judge, of course, but somebody‘s mistaken.
Ben, yup. I did fleetingly wonder yesterday if Orellana really had such a clear memory of something so long ago and from childhood.
She needn’t be lying or consciously inventing, of course; she could easily be confabulating. But the Guardian should have done a better job.