US apologises for Guatemala STD study

[quixotecoyote]

Yep. I am hit by that problem very often. I recognize it. I am a bad skeptic (or at least not as good as I wish I was). My knowledge is limited, I am more a jack of the trade than a specialist. I wish I would be better but I am not. Like everybody there are some zone where my skepticism fail. That used to be mostly politic, and it certainly still is partially the case, although I go often into the "cynical" mode.

That said some people here on this board, when it come to such debate as Gaza/Israel, are quite clearly entrenched in their position, and will not budge no matter what. And see the world as black and white. Is it the majority ? Nope. But they are on both side very vocal. I won't pretend my opinion on the Israel conflict are more valid than some other, but they certainly seem much more measured. Who knows maybe I am lying to myself on that too.

IMHO the debate on this board on that problem is so fragile and explosive it ain't much worth trying. But hey, one can try.

Fair enough, but I thing there is something of a golden middle fallacy you have to be careful of.

I mean, I make no secret that I'm solidly on the pro-Israel side of the debate, but even though I recognize they do their share of bad/counterproductive stuff (not consistently smacking down illegal settlers, for example), the other side is so openly horrible that it's hard not to see it as a black and white issue.

On one side you have groups whose foundational political documents call for genocide, whose state run television teaches children to be suicide bombers, who openly engage in holocaust denial, and so forth.

On the other you have a side whose worst crimes are not shutting down some fundy trailer parks on the wrong side of the border.

Then you get complaints because the latter tries to control the border and only allow non-weapon supplies through to the former. You get complaints that soldiers shot people attacking them with knives and clubs as they attempted to enforce that control. You get complaints that responding as if Gaza is hostile is punishing Gaza. And so forth.

And I just realized that we're in the Guatemala thread when I thought we were in the "punishing Gaza" thread, so I'll leave this with the argument that while there may be shades of grey in everything, sometimes, when there's a genocidal terrorist thugocracy attacking a generally liberal democracy, there isn't that much grey to be found.

It's a little different with threads like this, because USA-criticism threads don't generally have the critic taking the side of Al-Quaeda or the Taliban and how actions against them are horrible and minimizing their actions (generally).

Now, if you're going to take the Guatemala studies and say, 'that was wrong, USA did bad,' yeah, no argument. Who would disagree?

But if you move from that into saying that "Well, they did it once, so despite the lack of evidence, I'm going to assume they're still doing stuff like that," you're off the skeptic rails. There has been so much more regulation on what kind of studies are possible, so much attention paid to debacles like the Tuskegee experiments, and so much potential backlash if it were to be discovered happening today, that it's not a reasonable assumption to just believe that it's happening.

 

[danrush]

Well, that's all right then. Another Clinton apologising for activities of a sexual nature.

that's actually funny.

 

[Rolfe]

I found this one rather a pathetic attempt.

Actually, I found this one a massive improvement on his usual offerings.

Now, on the subject of Doing The Right Thing, when will the compensation payments start?

Rolfe.

 

[Doubt]

Can the USA really not withstand a joke? It seems you need to defend it from laughter.

You missed the real problem here. Your effort at humor and your serious criticism of the US are equally absurd in construction. The end result is that your serious criticism cannot be taken seriously and your humor cannot be regarded as humor.

There is a way to fix this:

1.) Participate in general discussions that don't have anything to to with the US, Israel or other politically charged issues. Then people may gain a sense of your personality and use it to compare what point of view you are taking.

2.) Balance your criticism. Promote good behavior of your targets while pointing out problems. Also criticize things other than your favorite subjects in the same way.

3.) Let people get to know you. How many people here know anything about you?

I am sure some other people here could add to this. It is intended as constructive criticism. I can tell you from my own reactions to reading your threads that they are more likely to reinforce positions opposing your own rather than make anyone reconsider their current opinions on subjects you feel strongly about.

 

[bit_pattern]

Did.

And now they're doing the right thing.

I have a bridge you might be veeery interested in buying, friend

 

[bit_pattern]

Actually, I found this one a massive improvement on his usual offerings.

He didn't mention Israel once!

 

[Schrodinger's Cat]

You missed the real problem here. Your effort at humor and your serious criticism of the US are equally absurd in construction. The end result is that your serious criticism cannot be taken seriously and your humor cannot be regarded as humor.

There is a way to fix this:

1.) Participate in general discussions that don't have anything to to with the US, Israel or other politically charged issues. Then people may gain a sense of your personality and use it to compare what point of view you are taking.

2.) Balance your criticism. Promote good behavior of your targets while pointing out problems. Also criticize things other than your favorite subjects in the same way.

3.) Let people get to know you. How many people here know anything about you?

I am sure some other people here could add to this. It is intended as constructive criticism. I can tell you from my own reactions to reading your threads that they are more likely to reinforce positions opposing your own rather than make anyone reconsider their current opinions on subjects you feel strongly about.

This is all very good advice.

 

[quixotecoyote]

Actually, I found this one a massive improvement on his usual offerings.

Now, on the subject of Doing The Right Thing, when will the compensation payments start?

Rolfe.

Well, for the Tuskegee Experiments, it started about 25 years later after a class-action lawsuit. Maybe we can do better this time and skip the lawsuit, even though it's been longer.

 

[Dorian Gray]

Can the USA really not withstand a joke? It seems you need to defend it from laughter.

If you want to make allegations about me please be big enough to actually quote some of my words. Any of them you like. They are all on the site for you to choose from. Even just one or two would be a start. I suspect you won't. If you won't then your 'case' is nothing but demonisation.

Who can't withstand a joke, [person whose location is unknown]? Are you really at the class level of making a joke of such a thing as intentionally infecting handicapped people with STDs? Is your mom dead? Maybe we could joke about that.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Oh please already. It seems that the lady doth protest too much.....

Ehh, your joke was in poor taste.

How this differs from Mengele is a stretch.

I was disgusted by Andrea Mitchell's ignorant comment (I think it was her, my memory is foggy), "But isn't medicine where it is because of this research?" or something to that effect.

No you ignorant *******. This kind of research doesn't give us anything useful in terms of medical research.

Edited by LashL: 

To properly mask profanity

My apologies if some other female news commentator made the comment this morning. My incessant channel surfing makes it difficult to remember who said what.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Are they ? All we can say is that we have no evidence that they are doing similar stuff today. ...

Well, except unless the military has some secret military medical research going on, we can say that medical researchers have adopted a much more modern view of human rights in medical research. The medical scientific research community is not practicing their trade like the ignorant sots of the 40s and 50s. I can assure you if they were, the rest of the medical community would find their research embarrassing, unscientific, and atrocious. Researchers are very much motivated by what their peers think of their work.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

...

My response was more directed at E.J.'s tendency to grab at anything he can find, no matter how flimsy, to attack the US. I found this one rather a pathetic attempt.

While I agree for the most part, one does have to point out the US's John Wayne version of ourselves during WWII is in stark contradiction to the vision we all have of Germany's Mengele.

So much for people's versions of reality.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Just goes to show we see what we want to see.

With vivid clarity.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Fair enough, but I thing there is something of a golden middle fallacy you have to be careful of. ....

I would say in the case of the I-P debate, it is a very black middle, not a golden one. And anyone who claims P is worse than I, or I is worse than P is picking which travesties to value and which to discount.

But I digress.....

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I have a bridge you might be veeery interested in buying, friend

So you have evidence to support this claim, right?

 

[bit_pattern]

So you have evidence to support this claim, right?

No, but neither does the person I was replying to, and the whole point of this is that we've only just gained evidence of it sixty years after the fact, we won't know if America is currently doing anything as equally nefarious or not for another sixty years, one would think...

 

[Beerina]

Lies. The Greatest Generation would never do such a thing. But if they did, I'm sure they had a good reason.

Let's cross our fingers the study didn't actually prevent more cases than it deliberately caused, eh?

That would suck. I guess. Maybe. Glad it wasn't me.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

No, but neither does the person I was replying to, and the whole point of this is that we've only just gained evidence of it sixty years after the fact, we won't know if America is currently doing anything as equally nefarious or not for another sixty years, one would think...

Maybe some tiny group of bizzaro researchers are doing stupid things. But I do think the atmosphere of research is completely different from 60 years ago. I don't think that kind of research makes any sense to 99.999% of all researchers today.

There may be some researchers who are studying such things as torture and brainwashing. Or maybe some researchers in some other field besides medicine are doing horrible things. But I'm more than confident medical researchers today are not as ignorant as those from 60 years ago. You seem to think we couldn't say things have changed, but I assure you we can say they have. Do you wonder if anyone is studying bloodletting today just because they did a century ago? Change does actually occur and it is observable that it has.

 

[Pardalis]

No, but neither does the person I was replying to, and the whole point of this is that we've only just gained evidence of it sixty years after the fact, we won't know if America is currently doing anything as equally nefarious or not for another sixty years, one would think...

And maybe Australian doctors are doing weird experiments on the Aborigines.

Hey, gratuitous speculation is fun!

 

[bit_pattern]

And maybe Australian doctors are doing weird experiments on the Aborigines.

Hey, gratuitous speculation is fun!

If they are then we won't know about that for decades to come either, because secret tests by very definition don't have evidence, which was the point I was making and which evidently went sailing right over the top of your head.