The Lower Depths

The Globe yesterday reported on the uncovering of a horrific medical experiment done in the late 1940s, in which people were deliberately infected with syphilis in order to test antibiotic efficacy. Obama, in response, quite properly apologized to the Guatemalan government. The notorious Tuskegee study of the natural history of syphilis, in which treatment was withheld, came up.

You'd think this the last sort of thing that would become a partisan football: objectively, unambiguously documented, at straightforward odds with ethics and morality, all too reminiscent of the obscene Nazi 'experiments' of such as Mengele. You'd be wrong.

Check out the comments. Obama, the America-hater, never missing an opportunity to denigrate his country, which he's not a citizen of anyway. The Democrats were in power in the 1940s, so the study's their fault, and only what you'd expect. The Guatemalan government said it was OK, too, so it's really not our fault. And it's no big deal anyway.

This, friends, is how far we've fallen.

http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2010/10/02/wellesley_professor_unearths_a_horror_syphilis_experiments_in_guatemala/?comments=all#readerComm