U.S. Government Medical Researchers Deliberately Infected Guatemalan Prison Inmates with Syphilis
October 1st, 2010Via: Reuters:
The United States apologized on Friday for an experiment conducted in the 1940s in which U.S. government medical researchers deliberately infected Guatemalan prison inmates with syphilis.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and other top officials issued a statement about the experiment, which echoed the infamous 1960s Tuskegee study in which black American men were deliberately left untreated for syphilis.
“The sexually transmitted disease inoculation study conducted from 1946-1948 in Guatemala was clearly unethical,” the statement reads.
“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 experiments, aimed at testing whether penicillin could prevent syphilis, were discovered by Susan Reverby, professor of women’s studies at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.
More: ‘Crime Against Humanity’
