Guatemala STD study was 'wrong': US panel

[Judi Lynn]

Mar 2, 2011
Guatemala STD study was 'wrong': US panel

WASHINGTON - THE head of a bioethics commission convened by President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that a 1940s study of STDs using patients in Guatemala was wrong and that a US probe was continuing.

'What happened was clearly wrong,' said Amy Gutmann, who chairs the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, at a meeting to discuss progress in the Obama-ordered review of human protection in medical research.

'It was clearly terribly wrong and we want to get the facts out there,' said Ms Gutmann, who also announced the formation of a 13-member international panel of experts to examine the ethics of medical research around the world.

Executive director of the US bioethics commission, Valerie Bonham, said a full report on the 1946-1948 Guatemala situation should be released in the coming months.

More:
http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/TechandScience/Story/STIStory_640442.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. Background on the story: U.S. infected Guatemalans for STD tests

U.S. infected Guatemalans for STD tests
By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 2, 2010

The United States revealed on Friday that the government conducted medical experiments in the 1940s in which doctors infected soldiers, prisoners and mental patients in Guatemala with syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases.

The experiments, led by a federal doctor who helped conduct the famous Tuskegee syphilis study in Alabama, involved about 1,500 men and women who were unwittingly drafted into studies aimed at determining the effectiveness of penicillin.

The tests, which were carried out between 1946 and 1948, infected subjects by bringing them prostitutes who were either already infected or purposefully infected by the researchers and by using needles to open wounds that could be contaminated.

"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 Rodham Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a joint statement apologizing for the experiments. "We deeply regret that it happened, and we apologize to all the individuals who were affected by such abhorrent research practices."

More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/01/AR2010100107299.html