08.01.2018, Guatemala.
More than 400 plaintiffs filed a billion-dollar lawsuit against the Bristol-Myers Squibb pharmaceutical company, the John Hopkins University, and the Rockefeller Foundation for medical experiments on Guatemalan residents without their consent, teleSUR television network reports on January 6.
These US organizations conducted medical experiments, which studied venereal diseases (syphilis, gonorrhea, etc.) in Guatemala in the 1940s, without the consent of the plaintiffs. The lawsuit over the illegal experiments was filed on behalf of 444 people.
In 2010, US President Barack Obama apologized for the medical experiments on citizens of Guatemala, which took place without their consent.
Editorial comment
Unfortunately, stories like this, where the US shows its attitude towards citizens of poor countries, are not uncommon. The story of illegal medical experiments sticks out even more in the context of the Central America migrant caravan.
A number of US politicians, including the President of the United States, urged that under no circumstances should the migrant caravan (one third of which are children and minors) be allowed to cross the US border, calling them a threat to national security, and even urged to use firearms against them. At the end of 2018, the US Border Patrol used tear gas and rubber bullets against a crowd of migrants from a caravan with women and children, who did not even cross the border and stayed on Mexican territory.
Poverty, hunger, extreme criminalization of Central American countries are a direct consequence of the US policy. Now, residents of these countries openly write about it. For example, Colombian journalist Alice Loaiza wrote: “Today, the world is witnessing a new wave of migration, when thousands of people are moving in organized way from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, demanding from the US to take over responsibility for what they have created: unfriendly societies which are oppressive to workers, where hunger and violence are an everyday thing, where children are threatened and suffer from malnutrition.”
The story with medical experiments shows the attitude towards Guatemalans as a powerless “raw material” for experiments did not came about just now, it went on for decades and today, when we look at the “migrant caravan” story, we can see that the situation is getting worse.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
