New information is coming to light about America’s dark medical history. Scientists commissioned by the United States’ government in 1946-1948 purposely infected over 1,300 Guatemalan citizens with sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis, gonorrhea and chancres to study the effects of penicillin.

The Guatemalan citizens were comprised of prisoners, sex workers, and psychiatric patients. None of the test subjects signed a consent form or were told that they would be deliberately infected with a life-threatening sexually transmitted disease. They were told nothing about the experiment and there has been speculation that Guatemalan officials key to the safety and well-being of these subjects were bribed.

Of the 1,300 people infected, only 700 received any sort of treatment.

The sexually transmitted diseases which were given to test subjects can be very harmful and detrimental to health.  Syphilis, for example, can damage bodily organs such as the eyes, brain, nerves, heart, liver and bones. If untreated, people with syphilis can develop blindness, paralysis and even dementia.

A group of Guatemalans involved in the studies in the 1940’s have stated that they are suing the United States government over the situation.

The study was found stashed away amongst thousands of other files by Dr. Susan Reverby in October. Immediately after the information surfaced, President Obama commissioned a panel on Bioethics to research the investigation more thoroughly.

President Obama gave the panel two assignments: to oversee an investigation into the affair in Guatemala and to be sure that current regulations protect people from unethical treatment.

The former report was due in September and the latter is due in December.

The investigation has uncovered that the United States’ scientists weren’t the only ones playing dirty. Guatemalan officials were also in on the deal.  

The scientists involved in the Guatemalan study were also linked to a syphilis study in a Terre Haute prison in Indiana. The key difference between the Guatemalan study and the study in Indiana is the fact that the prisoners in Terre Haute signed forms of consent.

So why was our country being such a jerk?

It is important to remember that the 1940’s weren’t exactly the nicest times. Many horrible things were happening during that time period and American scientists may have just been trying to keep up.

Not that ‘keeping up’ is a justification for their actions, but other countries were performing medical experiments that pale ours in comparison.

German doctors performed deadly experiments on thousands of concentration camp inmates. Josef Mengele of Auschwitz, for example, performed experiments for the sole purpose of establishing racial inferiority. He infected gypsies and Jews with contagious diseases just to see what would happen. He also performed multitudes of sterilization experiments in order to find a way to mass sterilize all of the Jews.

It seems like America was doing experiments such as the one in Guatemala because, well, all the cool kids were doing it.

The doctors had to have known that what they were doing was unethical. You don’t just go around inoculating people left and right because you feel like it. In the 1940’s little was known about syphilis.

Luckily the Guatemalan government was there to give them a hand, right?

Dr. Grimes, who teaches ethics at Peninsula College comments, “The time period seems irrelevant to the issue of whether the actions were morally correct. The doctors might have believed that what they were doing was morally right.”

Amy Gutmann, the Chair of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues said, “It is important that we accurately document this clearly unethical historical injustice. We do this to honor the victims. In addition, we must look to and learn from the past so that we can assure the public that scientific and medical research today is conducted in an ethical manner.”

She continued, “Research with human subjects is a sacred trust. Without public confidence, participation will decline and critical research will be stopped.”

Credits:

President’s Bioethics Commission Concludes Investigation into 1940s STD Experiments in Guatemala

Researchers infected Guatemalans with STDs, commission affirms by CNN Wire Staff