Panel: U.S. conducted 'unethical' studies

U.S. government researchers who purposely infected unwitting subjects with sexually transmitted diseases in Guatemala in the 1940s had obtained consent a few years earlier before conducting similar experiments in Indiana, investigators reported this week.

The stark contrast between how the U.S. Public Health Service scientists experimented with Americans and Guatemalans clearly shows that researchers knew their conduct was unethical, according to members of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.

A commission subcommittee recommended that the United States create a system to compensate people who are harmed by participating in scientific research. Many other countries require sponsors of studies and researchers to carry insurance for research-related injuries or have other ways to compensate volunteers who are harmed.

"These researchers knew these were unethical experiments, and they conducted them anyway," said commission member Raju Kucherlapati of Harvard Medical School. "That is what is reprehensible."

At least 5,500 prisoners, mental patients, soldiers and children were drafted into the experiments, including at least 1,300 who were exposed to the sexually transmitted diseases syphilis, gonorrhea and chancroid, the commission reported. At least 83 subjects died.

"We owe it to the people of Guatemala who were experimented on, and we owe it to ourselves to recognize what a dark chapter it was," said chairwoman Amy Gutmann of the University of Pennsylvania.

The revelations came on the first day of a two-day hearing convened to review the findings of the commission's investigation, ordered by President Barack Obama when the experiments were revealed in October.

-- The Washington Post