U.S. apologizes for Guatemala STD experiment

This is extremely disturbing:  U.S. government medical researchers intentionally infected hundreds of people in Guatemala, including institutionalized mental patients, with gonorrhea and syphilis without their knowledge or permission more than 60 years ago. Many of those infected were encouraged to pass the infection onto others as part of the study. About one third of those ...

By , a former associate editor at Foreign Policy.

This is extremely disturbing

U.S. government medical researchers intentionally infected hundreds of people in Guatemala, including institutionalized mental patients, with gonorrhea and syphilis without their knowledge or permission more than 60 years ago.

Many of those infected were encouraged to pass the infection onto others as part of the study.

About one third of those who were infected never got adequate treatment.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius offered apologies for the experiments today. 

The experiments, which took place from 1946-1948, were discovered by Wellesley Women’s Studies professor Susan Reverby in the course of her study on another infamous STD study, the Tuskeegee Syphillis Experiment. You can read her findings here

Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating

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