Eh tu, Mengele

Sorry, I understand the scientific point made, but there's something creepy about the article.

Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Cienfuegos, Cuba and Loyola University had a unique opportunity to observe the impact of population-wide weight loss due to sustained reductions in caloric intake and an increase in energy output.
This situation occurred during the economic crisis of Cuba in 1989-2000. As a result, obesity declined, as did deaths attributed to diabetes, coronary heart disease and stroke.

One researcher tries to soften it. See highlighted text.

"This is the first, and probably the only, natural experiment, born of unfortunate circumstances, where large effects on diabetes, cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality have been related to sustained population-wide weight loss as a result of increased physical activity and reduced caloric intake," said Manuel Franco, MD, a PhD candidate in the Bloomberg School of Public Health's Department of Epidemiology.

I'm used to Cubans being depersonalized, relegated to cute brown natives in the mindset of European tourists, but this is weird. Apparently, a perpetually starved population makes for good research. If that's the case, right now there are thousands of potential subjects in huge swaths of Africa. But why stop there? We can replicate the conditions in the United States. We don't even need to ask for volunteers. And by the way, there was nothing natural about the Castroite experiment.

Anyone else creeped out? Read the whole thing here.