Guatemala sex study linked to Alabama syphilis experiment on black men
Doctor who infected Guatemalans with STDs also involved in ‘Tuskegee experiment’ on black men in US
The scandal over Guatemalans infected with sex diseases in the 1940s so that US researchers could test remedies has revived painful memories of a similar episode involving African-Americans in the 20th century.
US President Barack Obama personally apologized on Friday to Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom and “all those affected,” by the experiment conducted by US public health researchers on hundreds of people in Guatemala between 1946 and 1948, the White House said.
In 1997, then president Bill Clinton similarly apologized for a study on treating syphilis that involved 400 black men who were recruited by medical authorities but were denied any treatment so researchers could study the progression of the disease.
The study on seasonal farm workers in the southern city of Tuskegee, Alabama, often described as the “Tuskegee experiment,” took place between 1932 and 1972.
The two ordeals are linked together by one man. The chief researcher in the Guatemala study, controversial US public health doctor John Cutler, also played a major role in the Tuskegee experiment.
In fact, the Guatemala experiments came to light this year after Wellesley College professor Susan Reverby stumbled upon archived documents outlining the experiment led by Cutler, who died in 2003.