Human Tissues From Cruel Medical Experiments In Guatemala And Tuskegee Might Still Be Sitting In US

The US Public Health Service exposed more than 1,300 Guatemalans to syphilis, gonorrhea, and other sexually transmitted infections without consent in the late 1940s. Tissues from these people may still reside on lab shelves, says a bombshell new report.

Posted on April 10, 2018, at 9:21 a.m.
Dan Vergano
Dan Vergano
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Washington, DC
Reporting From
Washington, DC



Human tissues from unethical experiments conducted in Guatemala in the 1940s might still rest on the shelves of US government labs, according to a new report by medical historians. The researchers are calling for a comprehensive tally and removal of these specimens out of respect for the unwitting patients they were taken from.

“It’s creepy — it should strike everyone as disturbing,” study coauthor Paul Lombardo of the Georgia State University School of Law told BuzzFeed News. “We really need the full story here, and a search for all the records and specimens, if they remain.”

From 1947 to 1948, with the aim of developing tests for various sexually transmitted infections, researchers from the US Public Health Service exposed more than 1,300 Guatemalan soldiers, sex workers, inmates, and psychiatric patients to syphilis, gonorrhea, and other sexually transmitted infections without their consent.

A US Presidential Bioethics Commission report in 2011 condemned the Cold War experiments as “unconscionable,” and spurred calls for recompense of the victims, their descendants, and families. Both Lombardo and his coauthor, Kayte Spector-Bagdady of the University of Michigan Medical School, worked as researchers on the Bioethics Commission report.

More:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/danvergano/guatemala-tuskegee-sti-ethics-tissues?utm_term=.mb88mBAKq#.me88a4P17