Aggregated News
A US court has dismissed a lawsuit by Guatemalan citizens against US officials in connection with unethical medical experiments conducted by American researchers in the 1940s. Lawyers representing the plaintiffs vowed to appeal the 14 June decision.
The semi-secret research project, which Nature reported on in “Human experiments: First, do harm”, involved a group of US medical researchers who established a lab in Guatemala to study treatments for syphilis, gonorrhea, and other diseases. They experimented on more than 5,000 Guatemalans — including military personnel, residents of mental hospitals and prisoners — without their consent and exposed at least 1,300 to sexually transmitted diseases. After details of the experiments emerged in 2010, President Barack Obama apologized to Guatemala and launched an investigation by the presidential bioethics commission, which issued a series of reports condemning the experiments.
In the court case, Guatemalans who contend they were victims of the medical experiments (or their legal heirs) sued 8 US federal officials. On Wednesday, Judge Reggie B. Walton ruled in favor of the US government, which argued that it was immune in this...
The semi-secret research project, which Nature reported on in “Human experiments: First, do harm”, involved a group of US medical researchers who established a lab in Guatemala to study treatments for syphilis, gonorrhea, and other diseases. They experimented on more than 5,000 Guatemalans — including military personnel, residents of mental hospitals and prisoners — without their consent and exposed at least 1,300 to sexually transmitted diseases. After details of the experiments emerged in 2010, President Barack Obama apologized to Guatemala and launched an investigation by the presidential bioethics commission, which issued a series of reports condemning the experiments.
In the court case, Guatemalans who contend they were victims of the medical experiments (or their legal heirs) sued 8 US federal officials. On Wednesday, Judge Reggie B. Walton ruled in favor of the US government, which argued that it was immune in this...