US University sued over sexually transmitted diseases experiments

More than 750 plaintiffs are suing Johns Hopkins University over its role in a series of medical experiments in Guatemala in the 1940s and 1950s during which subjects were deliberately infected with syphilis, gonorrhoea and other infections as part of study into sexually transmitted diseases (STD) without their consent.

The lawsuit in Baltimore seeks $1bn in damages for individuals, spouses and children of people infected through a US government study between 1945 and 1956.

The suit claims officials at Johns Hopkins had “substantial influence” over the studies by controlling some panels that advised the federal government on how to spend research dollars.

The suit also alleges that Hopkins and the Rockefeller Foundation, which is also named as a defendant, “exercised control over, supervised, supported, encouraged, participated in and directed the course of the experiments.”

The suit says the experiments were conducted abroad in order to give “researchers the opportunity to test additional methods of infecting humans with venereal disease easily hidden from public scrutiny.”

According to the US Department of Health, researchers initially infected Guatemalan sex workers with gonorrhoea or syphilis, then allowed them to have sex with soldiers and prison inmates with the aim of spreading the disease. The suit says orphans, children, and mental patients were also deliberately infected without their consent, and that treatment was withheld.

Revelations of the experiments came to light in 2010. US President Barack Obama apologised for the research, as did then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton.

“The people involved were icons at Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Rockefeller foundation,” said Paul Bekman, an attorney for the plaintiffs. “They knew about it, they were architects of it, they planned it, they sought funding for it, they kept it under the radar. Hopkins provided syphilitic rabbits that were used to inject individuals with syphilis.”

In a written statement, Hopkins called the experiments “deplorable.”

But Robert Mathias, the lead counsel for Johns Hopkins in the case, said the lawsuit is “baseless”.

“It was not a Johns Hopkins study. Johns Hopkins did not initiate, pay for or direct this study. It was a federal government study.”

The Rockefeller Foundation called the research “morally repugnant,” and agrees the US government owes reparations to victims and their families. However, it said the foundation “did not design, fund, or manage any of these experiments, and had absolutely no knowledge of them,” and will oppose the lawsuit.

Pharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb is also a defendant in the case.