Syphilis experiments in Guatemala

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Guatemala

The syphilis experiments in Guatemala were U.S. sponsored human experiments conducted in the 1940s with the approval of Guatemalan health officials. In Guatemala, from 1946 to 1948, doctors infected soldiers, prisoners and mental patients with syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases, without the informed consent of the subjects and then treated them with antibiotics. In 2010 the US formally apologized to Guatemala for conducting these experiments.

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[edit] Experiments

The experiments were led by United States Public Health Service physician John Charles Cutler, who later took part in the Tuskegee syphilis experiment.^[1] The information was uncovered by Susan Mokotoff Reverby of Wellesley College who found the documents in 2005 while researching the Tuskegee syphilis study. She shared her findings with United States government officials. The research was done with the approval of the Guatemalan government of the time.^[2] There were 696 subjects in total. While the Tuskegee experiment followed the natural progression of syphilis, in Guatemala doctors infected people with the disease. The goal of the study seems to have been to determine the effect of penicillin in the prevention and treatment of venereal diseases. The researchers paid prostitutes infected with syphilis to have sex with prisoners and some subjects were infected by directly inoculating them with the bacterium. When the subjects contracted the disease they were given antibiotics though it is unclear if all infected parties were cured.^[3] Francis Collins, the current Director of National Institutes of Health, called the experiments “a dark chapter in history of medicine” and commented that modern rules absolutely prohibit conducting human subject research without informed consent.^[3]

[edit] Apology

In October 2010, the U.S. government formally apologized and announced that there was no statute of limitations for the violation of human rights in that medical research.^[4]^[5] In a joint statement Hillary Clinton and Kathleen Sebelius said “Although these events occurred more than 64 years ago, we are outraged that such reprehensible research could have occurred under the guise of public health. We deeply regret that it happened, and we apologize to all the individuals who were affected by such abhorrent research practices. The conduct exhibited during the study does not represent the values of the US, or our commitment to human dignity and great respect for the people of Guatemala”. Human rights activists called for subjects’ families to be compensated.^[1] President Barack Obama apologized to President Álvaro Colom who had called these experiments “a crime against humanity”.^[6]
In addition, the US government asked the Institute of Medicine to conduct a review of these experiments. Also, a presidential bioethics commission will ask a panel of international experts to review the current state of medical research on humans around the world and ensure that such incidents cannot be repeated.