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

Barack Obama orders review of Guatemala STD study

Barack Obama orders review of Guatemala STD study

24 Nov 2010 President Barack Obama has asked a bioethical committee to review federal guidelines for protecting humans during medical testing after a US study revealed that Guatemalans were intentionally infected with sexually transmitted diseases from 1946-1948.

Mr Obama sent a letter to Amy Gutmann, director of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, asking her to convene a panel in January to determine "if federal regulations and international standards adequately guard the health and wellbeing of participants in scientific studies supported by the federal government."....
The commission should wrap up its work in nine months and then deliver a report to him, he said.

The Guatemalan study, which was never published, came to light this year after Wellesley College professor Susan Reverby stumbled upon archived documents outlining the 1940s experiment led by controversial US public health doctor John Cutler.
Cutler and his fellow researchers enrolled people in Guatemala, including mental patients, for the study, which aimed to find out if penicillin, relatively new in the 1940s, could be used to prevent sexually transmitted diseases.

Cutler, was also involved in a highly controversial study known as the Tuskegee Experiment in which hundreds of African American men with late-stage syphilis were observed but given no treatment for 40 years, between 1932 and 1972.

Initially, the researchers infected female Guatemalan commercial sex workers with gonorrhoea or syphilis, and then allowed them to have unprotected sex with soldiers or prison inmates.

A total of some 1,500 people took part in the study.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/8158524/Barack-Obama-orders-review-of-Guatemala-STD-study.html

The Dark History of US Medical Experimentation, 1,000 Kenyan Teachers Fired

The Dark History of Medical Experimentation from the Nazis to Tuskegee to Puerto Rico - Medical historian Susan Reverby, author of Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and its Legacy, discusses the history of medical experimentation at home and abroad. We also play excerpts of the documentary Deadly Deception: The Tuskegee Study. [includes rush transcript]
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/10/5/the_dark_history_of_medical_experimentation

1,000 Kenyan Teachers Fired for Sexually Abusing Young Girls - Firing of Teachers Underscores the Bigger Problem of Sexual Abuse in Africa By DANA HUGHES NAIROBI, Kenya, Oct. 8, 2010 More than 1,000 teachers have been fired for sexually abusing girls over the last two years, according to a new report from the Kenyan government. Last year, 600 teachers were dismissed over allegations of sexual abuse, and 500 more have been let go this year. The allegations range from inappropriate kissing and touching to impregnating girls as young as 12. Although the number of reported cases represents less than half of 1 percent of Kenya's 240,000 teachers, the firings underscore a serious epidemic of sexual abuse in the country, say child advocacy and women's rights groups. "In this year's report of abuse in relation to children, sexual violence topped the list at 86 percent," said Brian Weke, the program manager of the Cradle, a Kenyan child advocacy group....Ahmed Hussein, the director of children's services at the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Development, told the BBC. Hussein said that some of the teachers had already been arrested and prosecuted. Many, however, were simply fired and sent home.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/1000-teachers-fired-kenya-sex-probe/story?id=11833823

syphilis and human experimentation, Hell Minus One ritual abuse confessions

http://ritualabuse.us

Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present January 19, 2007
Medical scholar Harriet Washington joins us to talk about her new book, "Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present." The book reveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and the roots of the African American health deficit. It also examines less well-known abuses and looks at unethical practices and mistreatment of blacks that are still taking place in the medical establishment today....HARRIET WASHINGTON: ...Tuskegee is, you know, the icon of abusive experimentation of black people, but it's true, many people still don't know what happened, and there are a lot of misconceptions floating about, as well....What happened was that about 400 black men in Macon County, Alabama, with syphilis-who had been diagnosed with syphilis, at least-were studied over a period of forty years by the United States Public Health Service. There were 200 men who were not infected who were held as a control group, also black men. Over the course of forty years, these men were duped into thinking that they were in a treatment program. But they weren't. They were given pain pills, which, as it transpired, were simply aspirin. They were given spinal taps, which, as it transpired, were not for the good of their health or to monitor their health, but rather to ensure a supply of sera for the development of a syphilis test. So they were used over forty years, even after the advent of penicillin. When penicillin was recognized as a cure, it was withheld from these men.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And this was between-what was the forty-year span?
HARRIET WASHINGTON: 1932 to 1972.
AMY GOODMAN: How many people knew about this at the time? How did it stop?
HARRIET WASHINGTON: Hundreds of people knew about it, because there were regular reports in the medical journals, and it was actually presented at an American Medical Association meeting in 1965. There were also numerous meetings of governmental agencies, where they periodically would ask, "Should we continue the experiment or not?" And the decision was always, "Yes, we should continue the experiment." It's worth noting that the surgeon general, Thomas Parran, had taken on syphilis eradication as his mission, and yet when penicillin was devised and he had the cure, he made the decision to continue the experiment, because he said they represent an opportunity that will never come again.
AMY GOODMAN: What happened to the untreated men?
HARRIET WASHINGTON: The untreated men, as you can well imagine, many of them died horrible deaths. http://www.democracynow.org/2007/1/19/medical_apartheid_the_dark_history_of


President Clinton's public apology to U.S. survivors of human experimentation - The following is a portion of a speech given on 10/3/95 by President William C. Clinton concerning Executive Order 12975 - Protection of Human Research Subjects and Creation of National Bioethics Advisory Commission: "Thousands of government-sponsored experiments did take place at hospitals, universities, and military bases around our nation. Some were unethical, not only by today's standards, but by the standards of the time in which they were conducted. They failed both the test of our national values, and the test of humanity. The United States of America offers a sincere apology to those of our citizens who were subjected to these experiments, to their families, and to their communities. When the government does wrong, we have a moral responsibility to admit it." http://naffoundation.org/Pres%20Clinton%27s%20Apology.htm

describes abuse
Anne's Story of Deliverance From Satanic Ritual Abuse and her Journey to Freedom - When Anne A Johnson Davis was just three years old, her mother and stepfather began to physically, sexually and mentally abuse her—in the name of Satan. Until she ran away from home at 17, her parents and other cult members subjected her to satanic ritual abuse, a criminally inhumane and bizarre form of devil worship. In the middle of the night, Anne would be drugged and forced to endure hours of ritualistic torture as a symbolic sacrifice. The horrors Anne experienced, the astounding miracles that helped her to survive, and the heal-or-die choices she made as an adult to triumph over her tragic past, are revealed in her new book Hell Minus One: My Story of Deliverance From Satanic Ritual Abuse and My Journey to Freedom. http://hellminus1.com/