Deliberate sex infections atrocity
Unethical use of humans as research guinea pigs has long darkened medicine’s history. Most famous are the experiments carried out on large numbers of prisoners by the German Nazi regime in extermination camps during World War II. Sadly, a new example has recently come to light – the deliberate infection of hundreds of people in Guatemala with sexual diseases like gonorrhoea and syphilis in medical tests that started the year after the war ended. Evidence of the programme was unearthed by Professor Susan Reverby at Wellesley College, reports the Journal of the American Medical Association . Its aim was to find a better treatment for venereal diseases. With troops having returned from the war field incapacitated by venereal diseases rather than battle-wounds, the US government was acutely aware of the dangers of soldiers indulging in sex with prostitutes. Although they had the drug penicillin to fight syphilis – as well as the calomel-sulpha-thiazole ointment provided in...