CDC report on U.S.-funded, VD experiments on Guatemalans

[rabs]

Obama a few days ago apologized to the Guatemalan people and government for U.S.-financed syphilis and gonorrhea experiments on human guinea pigs in the Central American nation in the late 1940s.

The U.S. and Guatemalan government immediately announced that investigative commissions would jointly look into the matter. Seventy-one Guatemalans died during the experiments, although it is unknown if they all were related to the deliberate syphilis or gonorrhea innoculations.

But the CDC jumped the gun and issued a summary report last week, on Sept. 30

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Snippets from the report. It is not pretty.

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CDC Summary of Findings from the U.S. Public Health Service Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD) Inoculation Study of 1946-1948, Based on Review of Archived Papers of John Cutler, MD, at the University of Pittsburgh 30 September, 2010 Summary From 1946-48, the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) Venereal Disease Research Laboratory (VDRL) and the Pan American Sanitary Bureau collaborated with several government agencies in Guatemala on U.S. National Institutes of Health-funded studies involving deliberate exposure of human subjects with bacteria that cause sexually transmitted diseases (STD).

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Subjects for the transmission studies included female commercial sex workers (CSWs), prisoners in the national penitentiary, patients in the national mental hospital, and soldiers. These subjects were also involved in comparative serologic studies. Transmission studies initially included sexual exposure of prisoners to female CSWs experimentally infected with either syphilis or gonorrhea.

Transmission studies initially included sexual exposure of prisoners to female CSWs experimentally infected with either syphilis or gonorrhea. Later, subjects underwent direct inoculation, primarily of skin and mucous membranes, by viable T. pallidum. N. gonorrhoeae, and H. ducreyi.

The design and conduct of the studies was unethical in many respects, including deliberate exposure of subjects to known serious health threats, lack of knowledge of and consent for experimental procedures by study subjects, and the use of highly vulnerable populations.

Over the course of observation, 71 subjects were noted to have died, including one who developed fatal status epilepticus during penicillin therapy, although the records do not allow determination of the relationship of the deaths to study procedures.

There was no systematic description of other adverse events arising during the study or follow-up observation period. The study appears to have ended in 1948, although some follow-up laboratory testing and patient observation continued until the early 1950s.

There is no indication that results of the STD inoculation experiments were ever published in the scientific literature or another forum.

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Full CDC report (not long and unfiltered by any media)

http://www.scribd.com/CDC-report-on-1946-Guatemalan-STD-study/d/38570907

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Graphic from Guatemala City newspaper La Prensa Libre today.