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U.S. apologises for human experiments

Washington: The United States has apologised to Guatemala for a series of experiments U.S. researchers conducted on Guatemalan prison inmates and mental hospital patients between 1946 and 1948.

U.S. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued statements of deep regret this week after archival research by Professor Susan Reverby of Wellesley College revealed vulnerable Guatemalans were clandestinely infected with sexually-transmitted diseases such as syphilis, gonorrhoea, and chancroid.

The study, funded by a Department of State grant to the U.S. National Institute of Health, was purportedly aimed at testing the effectiveness of penicillin, which was relatively new at the time. The experiments, acknowledged by officials to be a gross violation of modern-day bioethics standards, were led by the late John Cutler, a U.S. Public Health Service medical officer.

Commenting on the episode, the White House issued a statement on Friday saying Mr. Obama had spoken with President Alvaro Colom of Guatemala to express his “deep regret” regarding the study, and to extend an apology to all those affected. He also reaffirmed the U.S.' commitment to ensuring all human medical studies conducted today would meet “exacting U.S. and international legal and ethical standards”.

In a joint statement, Ms. Clinton and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius said they were “outraged that such reprehensible research could have occurred under the guise of public health”.

They added they deeply regretted the “clearly unethical” experiments had happened and apologised to all the individuals affected by such “abhorrent research practices”.

Officials also remarked the study revived memories from another dark period for U.S. medical ethics — the Tuskegee, Alabama, experiments, in which nearly 400 African-American men were infected with syphilis without informed consent. In that case, treatment through Penicillin was not provided.

To further examine the question of adherence to bioethics standards, the government also announced two investigations into the experiments.

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