Yes, but where have you been?

Oh my. Your Bloguero's existence in the pixelated world is fading. Let him explain. This morning he noticed that he had not posted here in more than two months, the longest time ever. This, after 1445 posts over many years. And not even an explanation. Or a warning. Cue feelings of abandonment, violins, perhaps sadness and maybe even (sigh of Hammond organ) guilt. Shudder.

Maybe this is because blogs are so old school. Maybe they bear the same relationship to those old listservs and email chain letters that DVDs have to cassettes, old technology that improved only slightly on even older tech. Maybe social media (yes, your Bloguero is on FB and Twitter) have stomped out in rapid fire 140-character phrases all of the work it takes to post to a coherent entry to a blog. Maybe the wise crack has supplanted more developed thoughts. Maybe spontaneity (and not readiness) is all.

Maybe this is because, as your Bloguero once opined here, he wanted to get out of his chair, push back from the keyboard, avert his eyes from the screen and participate in the outside world, to have adventures as he bravely put it. And no, he declines to write about these adventures, thoughts, experiences here. The details of your Bloguero's personal life have never been the subject of this blog, and he doubts that they are the proper subject for any.

Maybe this is because your Bloguero spends every workday writing and when the day draws to a close, the last thing he feels like doing is even more writing.

Maybe this is because your Bloguero is forbidden by his present occupational activities from discussing politics or legal cases. Your Bloguero thinks this is not the greatest reason for his absence.

And so, your Bloguero offers you, dear reader, this: an apology for a prolonged, unexplained absence. Your Bloguero feels a bit like the father of the protagonist in the great children's book "Henry Bear's Park." The father is a balloon ascensionist. One day he flies off, leaving Henry to tend the park where they live. No explanation. No forewarning. Such a departure is probably inherent in his life's activities, in ballooning. And then, one day, he returns. Will your Bloguero return? He assumes we will all find out in due course.

US Apologizes For Human STD Experiment In Guatemala

This evening President Obama apologized to Guatemala's President for human STD experiments conducted on Guatemalan prisoners, army trooops and mental hospital inmates. Earlier today, Secretary of State Clinton and Health Secretary Sebelius tendered similar apologies. The news of the experiments, which had been kept secret from the subjects and Guatemala's government, has evoked a firestorm of criticism in Guatemala.

The events in question took place 64 years ago, and they were an egregious, secret series of human rights violations, that were "clearly unethical".

Here is a description of the experiments, discovered by Susan M. Reverby, a medical historian and professor of women’s studies at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Mass., and revealed by her today in a journal article:

Dr. John C. Cutler, a Public Health Service doctor, ran a syphilis inoculation project in Guatemala, co-sponsored by the health service, the National Institutes of Health, the Pan American Health Sanitary Bureau and the Guatemalan government.

The health service, she wrote, “was deeply interested in whether penicillin could be used to prevent, not just cure, early syphilis infection, whether better blood tests for the disease could be established, what dosages of penicillin actually cured infection, and to understand the process of reinfection after cures.”

The service was struggling to grow syphilis, gonorrhea and chancroid in the laboratory and had been having difficulties with tests using rabbits and chimpanzees....

Turning to Guatemala, it ultimately chose nearly 700 subjects — men in the national prison and the army as well as men and women in the national mental health hospital.

“Permission was gained from the authorities, but not from individuals, which was not an uncommon practice at the time,” Professor Reverby wrote.

Prostitutes with syphilis were hired to infect prisoners — Guatemalan prisons allowed such visits. When that failed, in some men the bacteria was poured onto scrapes made on the penis, face or arms, and in some cases it was injected by spinal puncture.

If the subjects contracted the disease, they were given antibiotics — which was not the case in Tuskegee.

“However, whether everyone was then cured is not clear and not everyone received what was even then considered adequate treatment,” Professor Reverby wrote.

Dr. Cutler would later be part of the Tuskegee study in Alabama, which began in 1932 as an observation of how syphilis progressed in black men.

Clearly, conducting medical experiments on subjects who do not consent to the tests and, in fact, are not informed that they are being infected for the sole purpose of experiments is utterly unethical and a clear human rights violation.

A series of apologies is a starting point to bring transparency to this serious human rights violation. But apologies are clearly not enough. Those who suffered from the experiment and if they have not survived, their heirs should be compensated. And in addition, it's now necessary for the US government to investigate how many other, similar experiments may have been conducted by US Government agencies or under US Government auspices.

Murdoch Apologizes For Cartoon

At long last:

As the Chairman of the New York Post, I am ultimately responsible for what is printed in its pages. The buck stops with me.

Last week, we made a mistake. We ran a cartoon that offended many people. Today I want to personally apologize to any reader who felt offended, and even insulted.

Over the past couple of days, I have spoken to a number of people and I now better understand the hurt this cartoon has caused. At the same time, I have had conversations with Post editors about the situation and I can assure you - without a doubt - that the only intent of that cartoon was to mock a badly written piece of legislation. It was not meant to be racist, but unfortunately, it was interpreted by many as such.

We all hold the readers of the New York Post in high regard and I promise you that we will seek to be more attuned to the sensitivities of our community.

All of which proves that New York's governor threw those of us under an oncoming bus far too quickly. Maybe his will be the next apology. It should be. But I'm not holding my breath.