Washington, April 25, 2011—Between 1946 and 1948, U.S. public health researchers infected hundreds of Guatemalan prisoners, soldiers and mentally ill patients with syphilis and gonorrhea, without their knowledge or consent, in order to test the effectiveness of penicillin. The experiments were carried out in Guatemala under the cloak of confidentiality, and the results were never published in the United States. But after a scholar discovered archives chronicling the program at the University of Pittsburgh and published her findings last year, the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) took custody of the documents and on March 29 made them publicly available.
In the press release issued by the National Archives, the collection is described as consisting of some 12,000 pages of reports, correspondence, patient records and graphic photographs of the effects of syphilis infection on Guatemalan subjects. The papers belonged to the late Dr. John C. Cutler, an expert in sexually transmitted diseases and a leading researcher at the U.S. Public Health Service, who designed and oversaw the syphilis experiments. Before his death in 2003, Cutler donated the records to the university. NARA has since posted the collection on-line for public access, and made the originals available through the National Archives in Atlanta. (more…)
