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Thursday October 7, 2010


U.S. Gov Infected Hundreds of Guatemalans with STDs in 1940s: Obama Admin Apologizes

By Kathleen Gilbert

WASHINGTON, D.C., October 7, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The U.S. government has issued a formal apology after it was discovered recently that the American government had infected hundreds of unwitting Guatemalans with syphilis and gonorrhea as part of a medical experiment between 1946-1948.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius condemned as “appalling” an unpublished study describing the U.S. Public Health Service’s trials on Guatemalans decades ago as they sought to test penicillin’s effectiveness against the diseases.

The scheme was uncovered by Medical historian Susan Reverby of Wellesley College in Massachusetts. Reverby said in a press release that Guatemalan prisoners, institutionalized mental health patients, and even soldiers were subjected to the trials. Researchers infected the subjects, Reverby said, through intercourse with infected prostitutes or inoculation with a syphilis-causing bacteria on subjects’ arms, faces, and penises.

“In total, 696 men and women were exposed to the disease and then offered penicillin. The studies went on until 1948 and the records suggest that despite intentions not everyone was probably cured,” she wrote.

Guatemala has officially requested for full disclosure on the details of the Guatemalan study.

The revelations immediately sparked comparisons with the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment, another clinical study conducted by the Public Health Service, in which 399 poor African-Americans with syphilis were unknowingly subjected to analysis starting in 1932. Unlike the Guatemala experiments, the Tuskegee subjects already had the disease, and were not intentionally infected.

But the study, which later led to reform such as informed consent law, was roundly condemned because researchers withheld lifesaving information and treatment from test subjects, leading to their deaths and the infection of their wives and children. The experiment ended in 1972 after it was leaked to the press, 25 years after penicillin had been established as a treatment for syphilis, and by which time 128 of the original subjects had died of syphilis or related complications. Former U.S. president Bill Clinton apologized for the Tuskegee experiments in 1997.

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