US government ‘infected Guatemalans with syphilis’
A presidential commission acknowledges that US-funded research in the 1940s deliberately infected Guatemalan prison inmates and mental patients with venereal disease.
Dr Amy Gutmann, head of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, called the research a “shameful piece of medical history”.
Guatemala has condemned the tests as a crime against humanity and is threatening to take the case to an international court.
Last year, President Obama formally apologised to his Guatemalan counterpart, President Alvaro Colom, for the experiments intended to help research into the drug penicillin.
Prostitutes used
The US Health Service and the Pan American Health Sanitary Bureau financed several Guatemalan government agencies from 1946 to 1948 to work on research which exposed people to sexually transmitted diseases.
As part of the tests, prostitutes were used to transmit venereal infection to prison inmates and mental patients. Some patients are believed not to have been told they were part of the research.
Of the 5,500 Guatemalans involved, around 1,300 were infected with STDs such as syphilis, gonorrhoea or chancroid, of whom only 700 received any treatment.
‘A war against disease’
The commission noted that even in the 1940s, such practices were recognised as unethical by the scientific community – especially after the inhumane treatment of prisoners in concentration camps during World War Two.
“They thought, ‘we’re in a war against disease and in war soldiers die,'” said Wellesley College’s Professor Susan Reverby, who uncovered the records of the Guatemalan experiment.
The experiments were led by a junior scientist, Dr John Cutler, who was working for the US Public Health Service and who until his death in 2003 remained unapologetic about his research.
The commission’s findings raise new questions about the ethics of pharmaceutical companies which are conducting clinical trials abroad.
It is working on a second report examining federally funded international studies to make sure current research is being done ethically. That report is expected at the end of the year.