US to release findings into unethical syphilis research

A US presidential commission will release key findings on a research project that deliberately infected Guatemalan inmates and mental patients with syphilis in the 1940s.

The conclusions have consequences for US diplomacy and will impact ethical discussion on how new drugs are tested on patients, as manufacturers increasingly conduct clinical trials abroad.

The US formally apologised last year for the experiment, meant to test the drug penicillin, after it was uncovered by a college professor.

Guatemala condemned it as a crime against humanity and said last year it would consider taking the case to an international court. Victims of the study are suing the US government.

President Obama’s Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues has conducted its own investigation and will issue recommendations today on protecting research participants from unethical treatment.

“They will have a chance to do a richer investigation and we’ll have a richer picture of what happened,” said Wellesley College professor Susan Reverby, whose research revealed the previously unpublished records of the Guatemalan experiment.

Reverby uncovered the Guatemala experiment between 1946 and 1948 in Guatemala after years of research.

Later confirmed by federal health agencies, her findings showed that the PHS, under a grant from the NIH to the Pan American Sanitary Bureau and in collaboration with several Guatemalan agencies, deliberately infected hundreds of people with the sexually transmitted diseases syphilis, gonorrhea and chancroid.

The patients were given antibiotic penicillin to determine its effectiveness in curing or preventing syphilis, an infection that can cause genital sores and rashes and, if left untreated, damage internal organs and cause paralysis, blindness or even death.

Some 700 people were infected with syphilis. These included inmates exposed to infected prostitutes brought into prisons and male and female patients in a mental hospital. Some subjects had bacteria poured on scrapes made on their genitals, arms or faces.

Records show no documentation that the subjects gave informed consent or understood they were participating in research, according to a September 2010 report by the CDC.