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From: Tsegai Emmanuel (emmanuelt40@gmail.com)
Date: Sat Oct 02 2010 - 20:58:00 EDT
US Admits It Infected Guatemalans With Syphilis in 1940s
Friday 01 October 2010
by: Tim Johnson | *McClatchy Newspapers |
Report*<http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/10/01/101473/us-admits-it-infected-guatemalans.html>
Friday’s acknowledgment sheds new light on US medical experiments that
included the infamous “Tuskegee” syphilis study in which scientists
observed, but didn’t treat, hundreds of African American men with late-stage
syphilis in Macon County, Alabama. (Photo: National Archives and Records
Administration<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tuskegee-syphilis-experiment-test-subjects.gif>
)
Mexico City - Exposing a dark page in its history, the U.S. government
acknowledged Friday that its scientists had infected hundreds of Guatemalans
with syphilis in experiments conducted from 1946 to 1948 in “appalling
violations” of medical ethics.
Under the experiments, U.S. scientists sent prostitutes infected with
syphilis into a Guatemalan prison, mental health hospital and army barracks
to test possible cures.
“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,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Health and Human Services
Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a joint statement.
“We deeply regret that it happened, and we apologize to all the individuals
who were affected by such abhorrent research practices.”
The statement said current regulations prohibit such “appalling violations”
of ethics regarding human medical research and added that the two
departments would launch “a thorough investigation” of the 1946-1948 tests
in Guatemala.
Clinton called President Alvaro Colom of Guatemala Thursday night “to
express her personal outrage, deep regret,” Arturo Valenzuela, the assistant
Secretary of State for Western hemisphere affairs, said in a Twitter
message.
Valenzuela said in another posting that he’d spoken with Guatemala’s
ambassador to Washington to express a U.S. “commitment to human dignity and
respect for the people.
Friday’s acknowledgment shed new light on U.S. medical experiments that
included the infamous “Tuskegee” syphilis study in which scientists
observed, but didn’t treat, hundreds of African American men with late-stage
syphilis in Macon County, Alabama, over a period of decades starting in
1932.
*Don’t miss a beat - get Truthout Daily Email Updates. Click here to sign up
for free. <http://www.truth-out.org/newsletter>*
A Wellesley College professor of history and women’s studies, Susan M.
Reverby, who helped uncover the secret U.S. research in Guatemala, offered
details of the project in a paper on her website (Normal Exposure’ and
Inoculation Syphilis: A PHS ‘Tuskegee’ Doctor in Guatemala,
1946-48<http://www.wellesley.edu/WomenSt/Synopsis%20Reverby%20'Normal%20Exposure'.pdf>
)
She found that a Public Health Service team led by physician John C. Cutler
infected 696 subjects from the Guatemalan National Penitentiary, an army
barracks, and a national mental health hospital.
The U.S. physicians did not get permission from the subjects, she wrote.
“The doctors used prostitutes with the disease to pass it to the prisoners
(since sexual visits were allowed by law in Guatemalan prisons) and then did
direct inoculations,” either on to the men’s sexual organs, forearms, face
or through spinal injections.
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