Aggregated News
Responding to U.S. experiments that infected Guatemalans with syphilis and gonorrhea in the 1940s, the Obama administration announced Tuesday that it will spend $1 million to study new rules for protecting medical research volunteers. An additional $775,000 will go to fighting sexually transmitted diseases in Guatemala.
The funding arrives a month after a presidential commission investigating the experiments recommended that the United States develop a system to compensate anyone harmed in medical research. It also follows apologies made in 2010 to the Guatemalan victims by President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
“Although these events occurred more than six decades ago, we are outraged that such reprehensible research could have occurred under the guise of public health and we deeply regret that it happened,” a spokesperson for HHS, which provided the funds, said Tuesday.
To test penicillin as a treatment, U.S. and Guatemalan doctors infected prostitutes and prisoners from 1946 to 1948 without their knowledge or consent. The experiments remained hidden until a Wellesley College professor unearthed study documents in 2009...
The funding arrives a month after a presidential commission investigating the experiments recommended that the United States develop a system to compensate anyone harmed in medical research. It also follows apologies made in 2010 to the Guatemalan victims by President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
“Although these events occurred more than six decades ago, we are outraged that such reprehensible research could have occurred under the guise of public health and we deeply regret that it happened,” a spokesperson for HHS, which provided the funds, said Tuesday.
To test penicillin as a treatment, U.S. and Guatemalan doctors infected prostitutes and prisoners from 1946 to 1948 without their knowledge or consent. The experiments remained hidden until a Wellesley College professor unearthed study documents in 2009...