Unethical U.S. medical experiments done in Guatemala in the 1940s

Panel reveals new details of 1940's experiment
By MIKE STOBBE - AP Medical Writer AP 8/30/11 ATLANTA (AP)

A presidential panel on Monday disclosed shocking new details of U.S. medical experiments done in Guatemala in the 1940s, including a decision to re-infect a dying woman in a syphilis study.

The Guatemala experiments are already considered one of the darker episodes of medical research in U.S. history, but panel members say the new information indicates that the researchers were unusually unethical, even when placed into the historical context of a different era.

"The researchers put their own medical advancement first and human decency a far second," said Anita Allen, a member of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.

From 1946-48, the U.S. Public Health Service and the Pan American Sanitary Bureau worked with several Guatemalan government agencies to do medical research — paid for by the U.S. government — that involved deliberately exposing people to sexually transmitted diseases.

The researchers apparently were trying to see if penicillin, then relatively new, could prevent infections in the 1,300 people exposed to syphilis, gonorrhea or chancroid. Those infected included soldiers, prostitutes, prisoners and mental patients with syphilis.

The commission revealed Monday that only about 700 of those infected received some sort of treatment. Also, 83 people died, although it's not clear if the deaths were directly due to the experiments.

The research came up with no useful medical information, according to some experts. It was hidden for decades but came to light last year, after a Wellesley College medical historian discovered records among the papers of Dr. John Cutler, who led the experiments.

President Barack Obama called Guatemala's president, Alvaro Colom, to apologize. He also ordered his bioethics commission to review the Guatemala experiments. That work is nearly done. Though the final report is not due until next month, commission members discussed some of the findings at a meeting Monday in Washington.

They revealed that some of the experiments were more shocking than was previously known....

During that time, other researchers were also using people as human guinea pigs, in some cases infecting them with illnesses. Studies weren't as regulated then, and the planning-on-the-fly feel of Cutler's work was not unique, some experts have noted....

http://news.yahoo.com/panel-reveals-details-1940s-experiment-012040543.html

U.S. Illegal Experiments Went Beyond Guatemala, Ireland clergy abuse cover up

also:
CIA-Sponsored Child Abduction & Prostitution - The Franklin Scandal

New investigation into abuse cover-up 16 December 2010
Hundreds of children could have been saved from paedophile priest Father Brendan Smyth had the sex abuse scandal been dealt with properly by the Catholic Church, a new UTV Insight Special programme reveals. The Resurrection of Brendan Smyth - to be aired on Thursday - follows the trail of broken lives left behind by the sex predator who raped and assaulted children in Ireland, Britain and America as the Catholic Church covered up his crimes. Journalist Chris Moore....documentary in 1994 revealed Smyth's history of serial child sex abuse and how the church admitted it had known about it and had moved him around, where he was able to continue to abuse other children. In a new investigation, he hears from some of the victims Fr Smyth abused in America....Father Smyth was later jailed and died, aged 70, in August 1997, a month into his 12-year prison sentence. Earlier this year, the head of the Catholic church in Ireland confirmed he was present at a 1975 meeting where two teenagers abused by Father Smyth were asked to take a vow of silence. Cardinal Sean Brady apologised for failing to alert the authorities about the serial abuser.
http://www.u.tv/News/New-investigation-into-abuse-cover-up/b3920548-dce7-44b8-8a03-2b2644859fca

Insight Special 16 December 2010 The story of the priest who was convicted of multiple cases of child abuse, examining the lives he affected and the impact his crimes had on the Catholic church. http://www.u.tv/utvplayer/video/134183

U.S. Illegal Experiments Went Far Beyond Guatemala 14 December 2010
GUATEMALA - The illegal experiments conducted on human beings by a U.S. medical team in the 1940s went far beyond Guatemala, according to local news reports. The team headed by Dr. John Cutler did the same thing in the United States, India, and African nations, said Leon Arango, member of the commission in charge of investigating the experiments on Guatemalans, quoted in the Diario de Centro America newspaper on Monday. Cutler headed a team that from 1946 to 1948 intentionally infected 610 Guatemalans with venereal diseases, including prostitutes, prisoners, soldiers, and mentally disabled people, according to a report published by a U.S. investigator....
Arango said he had information that showed the experiments were also conducted on U.S. prison inmates and citizens from a community in Alabama, as well in African countries and in India.
http://www.insidecostarica.com/dailynews/2010/december/14/centralamerica10121402.htm


A Carefully Crafted Hoax - CIA-Sponsored Child Abduction & Prostitution - The Franklin Scandal - A Carefully Crafted Hoax? is a feature investigative documentary that examines child prostitution and sexual exploitation in America by focusing on the well-documented story of Johnny Gosch, a paperboy adbucted in Des Moines, Iowa, and its connection to a notorious pedophile network based in Nebraska. http://rumur.com/hoax

US judge asks Vatican to serve court paper to pope, US STD experiments

also:
U.S. apologizes for Guatemala STD experiments
Texas Teacher Accused of Taping Sex With as Many as 70 Children

US judge asks Vatican to serve court paper to pope
By DINESH RAMDE , Associated Press
October 1, 2010 MILWAUKEE - A federal U.S. judge is asking the Vatican to cooperate in serving the pope and two other top officials with court papers that stem from decades-old allegations of sexual abuse by a priest in Wisconsin.

The request is an incremental step in a lawsuit that accuses the officials of conspiring to keep the allegations against the Milwaukee priest quiet. The Vatican is not obliged to comply with the request.

When faced with similar requests the Vatican has made service difficult, time-consuming and expensive by insisting, for example, that documentation be translated into Latin, one of the Vatican's official languages.
http://www.startribune.com/local/104159973.html
also at:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101001/ap_on_re_us/us_church_abuse_vatican_lawsuit_3

U.S. apologizes for Guatemala STD experiments
Government researchers infected patients with syphilis, gonorrhea without their consent in the 1940s
By Robert Bazell Chief science and health correspondent NBC News NBC News 10/1/10 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.

On Friday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius offered extensive apologies for actions taken by the U.S. Public Health Service....
The episode raises inevitable comparisons to the infamous Tuskegee experiment, the Alabama study where hundreds of African-American men were told they were being treated for syphilis, but in fact were denied treatment. That U.S. government study lasted from 1932 until press reports revealed it in 1972.

The Guatemala experiments, which were conducted between 1946 and 1948, never provided any useful information and the records were hidden.

They were discovered by Susan Reverby, a professor of women's studies at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and were posted on her website. http://www.wellesley.edu/WomenSt/fac_reverby.html


According to Reverby’s report, the Guatemalan project was co-sponsored by the U.S. Public Health Service, the NIH, the Pan-American Health Sanitary Bureau (now the Pan American Health Organization) and the Guatemalan government. The experiments involved 696 subjects — male prisoners and female patients in the National Mental Health Hospital.
The researchers were trying to determine whether the antibiotic penicillin could prevent syphilis infection, not just cure it, Reverby writes. After the subjects were infected with the syphilis bacteria — through visits with prostitutes who had the disease and direct inoculations — it is unclear whether they were later cured or given proper medical care, Reverby notes. While most of the patients got treatment, experts estimate as many as a one-third, did not.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39456324/ns/health-sexual_health/


Texas Teacher Accused of Taping Sex With as Many as 70 Children
September 30, 2010 FoxNews.com An El Paso, Texas, high school dance teacher was jailed without bond Thursday on charges of sexual exploitation of minors and possessing child pornography, allegedly including 200 videotapes of himself having sex with as many as 70 children, some of whom were elementary school age.
Federal agents testified that they found the videos in the home of 34-year-old Marco Alferez. The agents said the videos showed Alferez having sex with children as young as elementary school age, the El Paso Times reported.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Gilbert Campa testified he found 12 VHS tapes, each about four to six hours long, and 107 8-mm tapes of Alferez having sex with children. Campa said ICE agents have been able to identify 65 to 70 victims in the homemade videos, and it appeared that Alferez tried hide the camera during the sexual acts....
Campa also testified Alferez admitted downloading child pornography, as well as making the videos of himself with children.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/09/30/texas-teacher-accused-taping-sex-children/