Report on STD Research in Guatemala, 1946-48

This report examines a study funded by the U.S. Public Health Service in Guatemala in 1946–48 on sexually transmitted diseases using experiments that were “clearly unethical.” President Barrack Obama charged the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues in November 2010 to research and report on the Guatemalan experiments after he learned of the experiments that deliberately infected the subjects with syphilis, gonorrhea, and chancroid. The subjects included soldiers, patients from a state-run psychiatric hospital, and commercial sex workers. Serology experiments, not involving exposure, continued in 1953, even using children.

The President also asked the Commission to review current practices in human subject research to safeguard “the health and well-being of participants in scientific studies supported by the federal government.”

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