The Guatemala Syphilis Experiments
U.S. government researchers deliberately infected Guatemalan prisoners, soldiers, and mental patients with syphilis and other diseases without their consent in the 1940s — and the experiments stayed hidden for over 60 years until a historian found the records by accident.
The Guatemala Syphilis Experiments were a real U.S. Public Health Service research program conducted between 1946 and 1948, in which American researchers deliberately infected Guatemalan prisoners, soldiers, psychiatric patients, and other vulnerable individuals with syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases without informed consent, to study disease progression and treatment. The experiments remained undisclosed for over sixty years until a historian discovered original research records in 2010, prompting a formal U.S. government apology and investigation.
- →The experiments were conducted between 1946 and 1948 by U.S. Public Health Service researchers, with cooperation from some Guatemalan government officials, deliberately infecting approximately 1,300 Guatemalan prisoners, soldiers, psychiatric patients, and commercial sex workers with syphilis, gonorrhea, or chancroid without their informed consent.
- →The stated research purpose was studying disease progression and testing penicillin's effectiveness as a treatment, building on related, separately controversial U.S. syphilis research including the Tuskegee study.
- →The experiments remained essentially unknown to the public and formally undisclosed for over sixty years, until historian Susan Reverby discovered original research records among the papers of a deceased researcher involved in the program in 2010.
- →Following the 2010 discovery and its public exposure, U.S. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a formal public apology to Guatemala, and a subsequent U.S. government bioethics commission investigation confirmed and formally documented the experiments' full scope and severe ethical violations.