Monsters Inside Them

What kind of human monster would deliberately infect another unsuspecting human being with a deadly disgusting disease and then sit back for years and watch the consequences without the slightest empathy or emotion as it ravaged its helpless victim? What trained medical doctor would perform gruesome medical experiments on completely vulnerable patients without their knowledge or consent? What kind of nation and government would sponsor this kind of horror?  

Dr. Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi SS officer physician and Auschwitz concentration camp doctor, comes to mind. Known as the Angel of Death for his macabre role in selecting thousands of victims for death in the gas chambers, and performing gruesome medical experiments without anesthetics on unwilling human subjects, Mengele is surely the 20^th century poster boy example of human monsters.

But, hold on a minute; Dr. Mengele and the Nazi’s aren’t the only monsters guilty of such atrocities. Yes, it seems that even our dear old Uncle Sam has spawned a few medical monsters in the cause of God, country, and the greater good.

Last October, the US government apologized to Guatemala after revelations that, during the 1940’s, it also conducted “clearly unethical” experiments and “appalling violations” of medical ethics and human decency upon unwitting human beings. Now it is reported that the victims, some 700 Guatemalan soldiers, mental health patients, and orphans have brought a class-action lawsuit seeking compensation for the resulting damage.

United States public health doctors allegedly hired prostitutes diagnosed with syphilis or gonorrhea to have sexual relations with the hapless subjects, intending to spread the disease so that experiments could be conducted on them for potential cures. Orphaned Guatemalan children as young as 6 years old were used in the experiments as an uninfected test group.

These same Public Health Service doctors, in the 1930’s, performed the infamous Tuskegee Alabama syphilis experiments, in which hundreds of poor blacks were observed for decades without being told they had the disease.

Move over Mengele; it appears that you have some competition right here in the United States of America.