Tuskegee Experiment

Re “Facing the Shame of Tuskegee” editorial, May 18: You state, “Public exposure of the experiment finally led to outrage, and in the 1970s to guidelines that required informed consent from human subjects of scientific experiments.” What you failed to mention is that the mandatory use of informed consent was internationally agreed to by the participants in the Nuremberg trials following World War II. The first principle of the Nuremberg Code states: “The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.”

Maybe the doctors involved with the Tuskegee “experiment” were so obsessed with their work that they did not have time to learn any lessons from their medical brethren in Nazi Germany.

WARREN SPAETH

Los Angeles

* Re “ ‘I Am Sorry,’ Clinton Tells Tuskegee Survivors,” May 17:

Government experimenters caused black sharecroppers, including women and children, to suffer and die from the ravages of syphilis. President Clinton, full of emotion, said, “They were betrayed, their lives trampled upon.”

Who are the people who ordered and conducted these experiments? They worked for the U.S. Public Health Service. Where are the doctors and bureaucrats who condoned Tuskegee? Some are alive and well. Shouldn’t they at least be brought forth in shame, or does a tearful “I am sorry” excuse murder and torture?

RITA TAGGART

Santa Monica

* The history of the United States is replete with accounts of men and women triumphing over overwhelming odds and scoring some important victory in the name of their country. In the past the term “hero” has been reserved for them. Today, however, hero has taken on a new meaning and I’m not sure what it is. A few years ago, over Bosnia, an American fighter pilot bailed out of his multimillion-dollar jet as it was shot out of the sky. Once on the ground he managed to hide from the enemy for several days until he was rescued and returned to base. For this he was received at the White House and hailed by all as a hero.

Last week a group of men, whose only claim to fame was that they contracted syphilis and then were mismanaged by the government health services, were given a hero’s greeting by our president at the White House. It seems that their heroic act was that they unwittingly endured the failings of free medical care. Somehow I can’t see either of these incidents as a plot for a John Wayne movie.

In another age the word “hero” meant a person noted for feats of courage or nobility of purpose, especially one who has risked or sacrificed his or her life. In either of these cases do you think that definition fits? At least for the time being, we need a new definition for the word “hero.”

RICHARD J. FREEMAN

Yorba Linda

* President Clinton’s apologies to the aged victims of long-ago government blunder are a cheap, hollow gesture. How easy it is to take responsibility for something that occurred before one was born; yet Clinton rarely takes responsibility for the debacles that have taken place on his watch. Clinton should be apologizing for the deaths of the children of Waco, but wait, that wasn’t his fault, was it? He gave no orders one way or another.

But where was the president of the United States in the face of a national crisis with the lives of innocent children hanging in the balance? Hiding under a bed somewhere? Actually he was hiding behind a woman’s skirts, those of Atty. Gen. Janet Reno.

This sorry excuse for a president is a national disgrace whose disingenuousness and hypocrisy are a profound embarrassment.

RON YORKE

Reseda