http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/10/01/us.guatemala.apology/index.html?hpt=T2US apologizes for infecting Guatemalans with STDs in the 1940s
By the CNN Wire Staff
October 1, 2010 6:43 p.m. EDT
Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius apologized in a statement with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Washington (CNN) -- The United States apologized Friday for a 1946-1948 research study in which people in Guatemala were intentionally infected with sexually transmitted diseases.
A statement by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius called the action "reprehensible."
"We deeply regret that it happened, and we apologize to all the individuals who were affected by such abhorrent research practices," the joint statement said. "The conduct exhibited during the study does not represent the values of the United States, or our commitment to human dignity and great respect for the people of Guatemala."
President Barack Obama called his Guatemalan counterpart Friday "offering profound apologies and asking pardon for the deeds of the 1940s," President Alvaro Colom told CNN en Espanol in a telephone interview from Guatemala City.
"Though it happened 64 years ago, it really is a profound violation of human rights," said Colom, who said the report took him by surprise.
An international, independent commission will carry out an investigation, he said.
Clinton called him on Thursday, he said. "She too offered her apologies," he said, adding that she told him she was ashamed the United States had been involved in the matter.
Asked whether Guatemala was planning to take legal action, Colom said, "That's part of the work of the commission."
"We reject these types of actions, obviously," said Guatemala presidential spokesman Ronaldo Robles. "We know that this took place some time ago, but this is unacceptable and we recognize the apology from Secretary Clinton."
The study came to light recently when Wellesley College researcher Susan Reverby found the archived but unpublished notes from the project.
The scientific investigation, called the U.S. Public Health Service Sexually Transmitted Disease Inoculation Study of 1946-1948, aimed to gauge the effectiveness of penicillin to treat syphilis, gonorrhea and chancres. Penicillin was a relatively new drug at the time.
The tests were carried out on female commercial sex workers, prisoners in the national penitentiary, patients in the national mental hospital and soldiers. According to the study, more than 1,600 people were infected: 696 with syphilis, 772 with gonorrhea and 142 with chancres.
A similar study was conducted between 1932 and 1972 in Tuskegee, Alabama, on nearly 400 poor African-American men with syphilis whose disease was allowed to progress without treatment. The subjects were not told they were ill with the disease.
The Guatemala study was done under the direction of U.S. Public Health Service physician John C. Cutler, who later ran the Tuskegee experiment, said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the U.S. National Institutes for Health.
Collins told reporters that the Guatemala study represented "a dark chapter in the history of medicine."
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