As Grim Details Emerge, Guatemalan Victims Seek Justice for U.S. Medical Experiments in 1940s

A White House bioethics commission has revealed gruesome new details about venereal disease experiments from 1946 to 1948 in which U.S. medical officials intentionally infected Guatemalan sex workers, prisoners, soldiers and mental patients with syphilis in order to study the effects of penicillin. The commission concluded that nearly 5,500 Guatemalans were subjected to diagnostic testing — without their consent — and more than 1,300 were exposed to venereal diseases by contact or inoculations. At least 83 died over the course of the experiments, which were approved by the Guatemalan government. President Obama has apologized for the program, and Guatemalan President Álvaro Colom has described it as a "crime against humanity" and ordered his own investigation. We discuss the commission’s findings with one of its members, Dr. Anita Allen, a professor of law and philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. We are also joined by Piper Hendricks, an attorney collaborating with Guatemalan lawyers on a class action lawsuit against the U.S. government on behalf of 700 Guatemalans who were unknowingly infected with syphilis. Since the case was filed in March, one victim has passed away. "This is something that happened many, many years ago, and people have been waiting for decades to see justice," notes Hendricks. "Time is of the essence to address the horrifying things that people went through back in the late 1940s."