By Patrick Vanderpool
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

WASHINGTON, DC – President Obama apologized this week for what many consider the most infamous example of unethical medical research in history.  From 1946-1948, American public health doctors deliberately infected hundreds of Guatemalans with venereal diseases so that the doctors could test the effectiveness of penicillin.

The experiment exposed as many as 700 Guatemalan prisoners, mental health patients and soldiers to these diseases.  Records indicate that the United States actually paid for infected prostitutes to sleep with Guatemalan prisoners in an effort to spread the diseases.  If that did not work, some prisoners had the bacteria introduced to open wounds on their bodies.

It has taken the United States more than 60 years to apologize for the horrific treatment of these Guatemalans.  Although many feel that it is likely more form than function, the U.S. State Department has assured that an investigation will be conducted on the matter.

Guatemalan President Álvaro Colom, who just recently learned of the experiments via a telephone call from Secretary of State Clinton, called them “hair-raising” and “crimes against humanity.” His government said it would cooperate with the American investigation and would also perform an independent investigation of their own.

Professor Reverby, a Wellesley College Professor who is credited with bringing these experiments to public attention with a recent paper, said that the United States Public Health Service “was deeply interested in whether penicillin could be used to prevent, not just cure, early syphilis infection, whether better blood tests for the disease could be established, what dosages of penicillin actually cured infection, and to understand the process of re-infection after cures.”

While many would like to believe that the U.S. discontinued the experiment after only two years because of the ethical and humanitarian considerations, the evidence simply does not support such a finding.  More likely, the project was halted after “medical gossip” began to accumulate and because penicillin, which was quite costly, was being used at an exorbitant rate.

Dr. Mark Siegler, director of the Maclean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago’s Medical School, said that “[the project is] appalling — that, at the same time as the United States was prosecuting Nazi doctors for crimes against humanity, the U.S. government was supporting research that placed human subjects at enormous risk.”

Dr. Siegler also stated that the Guatemala experiment was worse than the famous Tuskegee trials that infected African-Americans living in Alabama with syphilis because many of those subjects were infected by natural means, while many of the Guatemalan subjects were infected by inhumane and almost tortuous means.

Perhaps the most disconcerting aspect is that U.S. Public Health Service was entirely aware of the ethical violations at play here, and consciously disregarded them.

For more information, please see:

USA News Week – U.S. Expresses Regret Over Infecting Guatemalans for STD Tests – 2 October 2010

CNN – Studies Show “Dark Chapter” of Medical Research – 1 October 2010

Latin American Herald Tribune – U.S. Apologizes to Guatemala for Syphilis Experiments – 1 October 2010

The New York Times – U.S. Apologizes for Syphilis Tests in Guatemala – 1 October 2010