Guatemala syphilis experiments

The Guatemala syphilis experiments were United States-led human experiments conducted in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948. The experiments were led by physician John Charles Cutler, who also participated in the late stages of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. Doctors infected 1,300 people, including at least 600 soldiers and people from various impoverished groups (including, but not limited to, sex workers, orphans, inmates of mental hospitals, and prisoners) with syphilis, gonorrhea, and chancroid, without the informed consent of the subjects. Only 700 of them received treatment. In total, 5,500 people were involved in all research experiments, of whom 83 died by the end of 1953, though it is unknown whether or not the injections were responsible for all these deaths.^[1] Serology studies continued through 1953 involving the same vulnerable populations in addition to children from state-run schools, an orphanage, and rural towns. However, the intentional infection of patients ended with the original study.

On October 1, 2010, the U.S. President, Secretary of State, and Secretary of Health and Human Services^[2] formally apologized to Guatemala for the ethical violations. Guatemala condemned the experiment as a crime against humanity. Multiple unsuccessful lawsuits have since been filed in the US.^[3][4][5]

Professor Susan Mokotoff Reverby of Wellesley College uncovered information about these experiments in Cutler's archived papers in 2005 while researching the Tuskegee syphilis study. She shared her findings with United States government officials.^[6][7] Francis Collins, the NIH director at the time of the revelations, called the experiments "a dark chapter in history of medicine" and commented that modern rules prohibit conducting human subject research without informed consent.^[8]