US doctors knew STD research on prisoners broke ethical codes

US GOVERNMENT researchers knew they were violating ethical standards by infecting Guatemalan prison inmates and mental patients with syphilis in the 1940s, according to a presidential commission.

US-funded research in Guatemala did not treat its participants as human beings, failing to even inform them they were taking part in research, the commission said.

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