We Gave Guatemala Gonorrhea

Well, you read the title of the article right…

Apparently in the 1940’s the U.S. performed experiments on oblivious Guatemalans giving them both syphilis and gonorrhea.  Wellesley College professor Susan Reverby discovered this upbeat piece of American history and her discovery explained how the project was sponsored by the U.S. Public Health Service, the NIH, the Pan American Health Organization and the Guatemalan government. Part of her discovery also explained how these experiments were done on male prisoners and female MENTAL HEALTH PATIENTS.

Dear god.  Just when you thought shock therapy and lobotomies were the worst thing we did to mental health patients back then..

On top of that, the people infected were encouraged to pass the disease on to the rest of the patients in order for everything to be studied.

Good lord, its amazing what comes to light half a century after the American government does something incredibly fucked up in collusion with corporate America.  But honestly, whos going to do shit about it now?  You just do something insanely cruel, cover it up, and keep it hidden for 50 years and meh, its not big deal.  Just like something else the government and corporate American did in 1954 to Guatemala.

With the go-ahead of then president Dwight D Eisenhower, the CIA got involved in the coup that overthrew President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman.  Why did America go in to help with a coup?  Because the president of Guatemala at that time introduced a land reform that would have put the United Fruit Company (a U.S. corporation) in jeopardy.  The United Fruit Company owned about half of the countrys land, the entire telephone system and the majority of railroads.  SOOOO, time to overthrow that bitch.  Because previously the US government friendly dictator Jorque Ubico didn’t even charge the company Guatemalan taxes, and the new guy was going to reform the whole deal, so bye-bye.

Ridiculous misuse of American power overthrowing a dictator who didn’t give the American company tax breaks and also purposefully giving people STD’s for study.  Pretty sick and twisted shit that you would more likely hear about Nazi Germany, not the U.S.  BUT, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did apologize on behalf of the ones behind the experimentation… so everythings ok now.