WHY ARE GOVERNMENT AND ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS SO EXPLOITATIVE AND UNETHICAL? They Were Injected With STDs. Now They Want Justice. “Nearly 850 victims and relatives are celebrating a “significant win” after a Baltimore federal judge allowed attorneys to proceed with a $1 billion lawsuit (initially dismissed last year) against Johns Hopkins University and others involving a 1940s offshore disease test. The Baltimore Sun reports on the ‘Guatemala Experiment,’ in which the US government secretly infected hundreds of Guatemalans with syphilis, gonorrhea, and other venereal diseases to study how STDs spread and how to treat them. . . . The suit says Johns Hopkins doctors were on panels that reviewed and approved federal funds for the experiment; it also says employees of the nonprofit Rockefeller Foundation and the predecessor to Bristol-Myers Squibb, two other entities named as defendants, took part in the tests.”

Amusingly, the story tries to link this grotesque misbehavior by government and university committees to Peter Thiel’s herpes-vaccine research, which is charged with not having the approval of a government/university committee.