I had really expected to see this story diaried and discussed before I got back from Guatemala this morning. But it seems not, so I'll start:
Susan Reverby, a historian at Wellesley, has been researching the Tuskegee Experiment, a study of the effects of syphilis on 400 Black men carried out without their knowledge or consent from 1932 to 1972. While digging through the archives, she came across documents that Dr. John C. Cutler, who would join the Tuskagee project in the 1960s, conducted a similar experiment in Guatemala from 1946 through 1948.
From 1946 to 1948, American public health doctors deliberately infected nearly 700 Guatemalans — prison inmates, mental patients and soldiers — with venereal diseases in what was meant as an effort to test the effectiveness of penicillin.NYT 1 Oct 2010
The next paragraphs, below the fold, require a strong stomach.
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