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| CNN |
In October 2010, we learned that the US and Guatemalan governments had worked together to purposefully infect hundreds of Guatemalans (thousands it would appear), including institutionalized mental patients, with gonorrhea, syphilis, and chancroid. They did so without the subjects’ knowledge or permission in order to study their effects.
In an English-language interview for Plaza Publica, Louisa Reynolds speaks with Wellesly College professor Susan Reverby who published the research.
Four years after your paper came out and the world learnt about the Guatemalan experiment, what impact do you think it has had?
I think it’s too soon to see whether it will have any impact on the way people understand bioethics. With Tuskegee, because it happened in the US, there’s the African American community to carry the story forward. But who’s going to carry out this story forward in the collective memory? We have a very small Guatemalan community here and it has lots of other issues. That’s the question: will knowledge about it go forward or will it become another tick in a list of awful things in which the US has become involved?
It’s a good but, obviously, pretty sick read.
