h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

From 1946 to 1948, U.s. government officials infected mentally ill patients with STDs(syphilis and gonorrhea). They provided them with prostitutes to the patients to test if the new drug penicillin could prevent them from catching STDs. About 696 men and women were tested and none of them were successful. President Obama and Hilary Clinton both called Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom and apologize for these test. In my opinion this is only one of the many terrible scientific experiments that U.S. has done on other countries. What's your opinion on the matter.

I think most governments have a few dirty secrets, if they spent all their time apologising they'd never get anything else done. It's a shame they don't admit to invading foreign countries on trumped up 'WMD' intelligence- you know, something really important.

When is Obama going to apologise for the road-works on the A45? Makes me late most mornings. Bah!!!

Yea, I agree with you.

It always seems so utterly pointless to me, a government circa 2010 or whatever the date migh tbe appologizing for somethign X years before they were even in politics, and in some cases before they were even alive... You never see any apologizing for events they actually may have had a hand in themselves, in their own era in politics/government, which makes the appologies for things like this just seem even more hollow...
Its also all too easy from our viewpoint in our age, to look back to past times and critasise the actions of peoples living in different times, wehn we have our own moral and social framework which differs so drastically often from what existed at the time... Having said which this isn't exactly vastly long ago so I'm not entirely sure how that would have varied from then to now...
I don't know; do appologies like this really 'do anything' for the communities of which the people such offences were performed against come from? Maybe they do, in which case, I guess there may be some justification or at least purpose, in having such otherwise hollow seeming appologies...

I totally agree with you. To answer your questions I do think that the apology matters because people in Guatemala could have a bad perception about the U.S.. But I do feel as if the apology was force, just so we won't have to war with Guatemala. It's not fair that President Obama and Hilary Clinton have to apologize for something that they were not apart of. But it will all fall back on the President just like the war and the economy. President Bush brought on the war and the economy and now President Obama has to deal with the consequences of that. I don't believe that he gets the credit that he deserves. I'm not saying that he is perfect or that he has done everything right, but to take the presidency while the country is in the state that it is is takes a lot of guts and I applaud him for that.