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Eugene

(61,593 posts)
Fri Jan 4, 2019, 05:25 PM Jan 2019

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.

Chuang’s 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 government’s Tuskegee study on black American men who were deliberately left untreated for syphilis even after penicillin was discovered.

-snip-

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
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Johns Hopkins, Bristol-Myers must face $1 billion syphilis infections lawsuit (Original Post) Eugene Jan 2019 OP
Not nearly enough Sherman A1 Jan 2019 #1
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