I remember after the 9/11 attacks Americans were in awe. We all mourned at the loss of nearly 3,000 lives of innocent people. We all scratched our heads in disbelief as to how it could be possible that our country, a country so wonderful, could ever be disliked by others. We are the "land of the free" and "the land of
opportunity"; in United States of America, the Declaration of Independence states that all men are created equal. Right? Well doesn't it?
Yesterday morning I was watching CNN (a normal rite of passage in my home). I was so excited about the turnout of my last post titled, "What to do about the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy", and I was on edge trying to decide what would be my next post. What would be a post that would give my readers a further glimpse of the boxes that surround us? When the story came on it hit like a ton of bricks; I was dumbfounded at how this is so much like one of those things you see in some cliché conspiracy theory movie.
On the morning of October 1, 2010 Hilary Clinton, secretary of state, apologized on behalf of America for something called the Guatemala STD Study. In this study conducted in 1946-48, the Pan-American Sanitary Health Bureau and the Guatemalan government exposed hundreds of Guatemalan prisoners and mental health patients without consent to serious illnesses, including gonorrhea and syphilis before treating them with penicillin. To say that at the time penicillin was new and experimental would be a gross understatement. I suppose some of the methods to exposing these people to these diseases will bring more color to the story. Although not all of the details have been released yet, one of the methods is apparent – prostitution.
"I suppose it's ok as long as it doesn't happen on American soil," some unsavory characters might say. Well what if it did? Perhaps we should look into a similar experiment conducted between 1932 and 1972. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was conducted by the US Public Health Service. In the study it recruited nearly 400 poor African Americans with syphilis to see how the disease would naturally progress without treatment. None of the subjects were told they had syphilis exactly; they were just told they had "bad blood".
Well, comments anyone?
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Since this post has been up, this blog has had over 200 views worldwide. For me this is an amazing milestone. I have had several visits at this point from other countries such as South Korea, Germany, Canada, Japan, UK, Netherlands, France, Italy, Trinidad and Tobago, Brazil, Australia, even one from Afghanistan.
ReplyDeleteThis has been a humbling and grand experience for me so far. Today I got a reply through Twitter from a movie star named Ethan Suplee (I'm sure if you Googled his name his image would ring a bell if you don't recognize his name). He wrote a response to this post. (I will not list everything he wrote because some of it was very honest. I don't want to lose any of his trust by quoting something that may be seen as less than ideal.) A part of Ethan's comment said, "We should be considered based on our actions toward all not just those born or living here..." Thank you Ethan for your insight and support.
Also from the UK independent singer/songwriter Candy Rose which you can learn more about at www.icandyrose.com/fr_home.cfm she gave the simple response, "OMG". Well to her, I don't think I could have said it any better. LOL.
Make sure to tell a friend about this site. Take a trip through the archives on a leisure day and read "Self Image" and "Dreams". Also send in your poems after reading "The Community Begins Now". This is not a site to be visited in silence. This is an oppurtunity for us all to say something within our lifetime that might make a difference for someone else. This is a community, a movement. This is Escaping The Box.
This may seem like a very short response, but mostly I thought that this was really kinda messed up. To think that anyone would use human beings (or any sentient being, for that matter) for a sick experiment. It's so sad that life of any sort is undervalued by so many people.
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