Unethical 1940’s Government Medical Research
A presidential panel revealed today that various1940’s medical experiments, conducted by the United States in Guatemala, were startlingly unethical. One experiment involved re-infecting a dying woman with syphilis.
"The new information indicates that the researchers were unusually unethical, even when placed into the historical context of a different era," the Associated Press reports.
The U.S. Public Health Service, the Pan American Sanitary Bureau and several Guatemalan government agencies performed the research, which was funded by the U.S. government. The experiment intentionally exposed people to sexually transmitted diseases. The goal was to determine if penicillin could prevent infections of 1,300 individuals exposed to syphilis, gonorrhea or chancroid. Soldiers, prostitutes, prisoners and mental patients were infected. Only about 700 of those infected received treatment. Eighty-three persons died, though it is unclear whether the deaths were due to the experiments.
No useful medical information resulted from the res4earch, say some experts. The study was hidden for decades but was revealed last year when a Wellesley College medical historian discovered records among the papers of Dr. John Cutler, leader of the study.
President Obama called Guatemala’s president, Alvaro Colom, to apologize. A review of the Guatemala experiments was also directed by Obama’s bioethics commission, a task nearly complete. The final report is due in September; some of the findings were discussed in Washington today.
The experiment was more inhumane than previously known. Seven women with epilepsy, housed at an insane asylum, were injected with syphilis below the back of the skull. Researchers hoped this might somehow cure epilepsy. The women all came down with bacterial meningitis, probably the result of unsterile injections.
One female syphilis patient with an undisclosed terminal illness was infected with gonorrhea in her eyes and elsewhere to see the impact of an additional infection. After six months she died. Dr. Amy Gutman, head of the commission, called this treatment "chillingly egregious."
Other people were used as human guinea pigs. Studies of this sort were less regulated in those days, and planning innovations during the work were not unique.
Panel members conclude that the Guatemala study was bad even by 1940s standards. Cutler and others in 1943 infected prison inmates with gonorrhea in Terre Haute, Indiana. Those inmates were volunteers. The Guatemalan participants received no such explanations and did not give informed consent, the commission noted.
The same commission is preparing a second report looking at current federally funded international medical studies. That report is due at the end of the year.
The Guatemalan government is undertaking its own investigation into the Cutler study; a report is expected by November.
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