Sixty-four years after a US-funded scientist conducted an experiment that infected his patients with syphilis in Guatemala, the US government today issued a formal apology to the Central American nation. The scandal, which had been buried in the files of an American researcher of public health services, is documented in the work published by a historian at Wellesley College, Susan Reverby.
National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins called the research described in the report Reverby "deeply disturbing" and "a terrible example of a dark chapter in the history of medicine." He added that US regulations today "would absolutely prohibit this type of study"
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton also called Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom last night to express his regret. She presented joint apology with Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius this morning.
the results of the Guatemalan research, which Clinton described as "reprehensible" -were never published. the only case came to light when Reverby found records of John Cutler, a former scientist of the public health Service of the United States, hidden in the archives of the University of Pittsburgh. They told the story of a man who devoted his life to conquer sexually transmitted diseases and led an effort of 2 years in Guatemala to monitor and treat syphilis and gonorrhea. In the 1940s, when it seemed that penicillin was successfully rooting syphilis in the United States, Cutler feared that simply rely on the pill after the disease was diagnosed was not enough. He wanted to test various others chemicals could be applied right after sex would prevent the disease entirely. To do this, of course, he needed the newly infected patients.
Between 1946 and 1948, Cutler performs research on Guatemalans in a national prison, a military barracks, only psychiatric hospital in the country, and national orphanage. He relied on syphilis- prostitutes and gonorrhea infected to transmit the disease to prisoners. A Asylum and army barracks, he and his team also have patients infected with infectious syphilis bacteria taken from humans and animals, mixed with broth of beef heart, distilled water or cerebrospinal fluid. One method involved inserting scrape the skin off the penis of her patients and drops of solution on the flayed flesh for an hour or two, according to the letters cited by Reverby. The children in the orphanage are not infected with syphilis, but Cutler have used in blood tests. Reverby said she found no evidence that patients were informed about what was happening to them. Instead Cutler has won the consent of institutions, often in exchange for shower supplies. Patients were treated with penicillin after infection was confirmed.
ethically, the Guatemala experience can be a step below where infamous Tuskegee, an experiment in which Cutler also participated. In Macon County, Alabama, scientists have made hundreds of African American men with syphilis were not treated so they can monitor the progress of the disease.
In addition to an apology, the US government asked the Institute of Medicine to launch an investigation of the facts in the Guatemala study. An international team of experts organized by the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical issues will also explore the best ways to ensure the raw ethical violations do not occur in medical research in any part of the world.
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