Johns Hopkins, Bristol-Myers must face $1 billion syphilis infections lawsuit
Source: Reuters
HEALTH NEWS JANUARY 4, 2019 / 12:23 PM / UPDATED 4 HOURS AGO
Johns Hopkins, Bristol-Myers must face $1 billion syphilis infections lawsuit
Jonathan Stempel
3 MIN READ
(Reuters) - A federal judge in Maryland said The Johns Hopkins University, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co (BMY.N) and the Rockefeller Foundation must face a $1 billion lawsuit over their roles in a 1940s U.S. government experiment that infected hundreds of Guatemalans with syphilis.
In a decision on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang rejected the defendants argument that a recent Supreme Court decision shielding foreign corporations from being sued in U.S. courts over human rights abuses abroad also applied to domestic corporations absent Congressional authorization.
Chuangs decision is a victory for the 444 victims and relatives of victims suing over the experiment, which was aimed at testing the then-new drug penicillin and stopping the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases.
The experiment echoed the governments Tuskegee study on black American men who were deliberately left untreated for syphilis even after penicillin was discovered.
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In letting the Guatemala case proceed, Chuang said lawsuits against U.S. corporations under the Alien Tort Statute were not categorically foreclosed by the Supreme Court decision last April 24 in Jesner v Arab Bank Plc covering foreign corporations.
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Read more:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-maryland-lawsuit-infections/johns-hopkins-bristol-myers-must-face-1-billion-syphilis-infections-lawsuit-idUSKCN1OY1N3