Guatemalans sue US for exposing them to syphilis in secret experiments

Hundreds of Guatemalans who were exposed by US scientists to syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases in experiments conducted without their knowledge during the 1940s filed a lawsuit on Monday against the US government demanding reparations.

The Washington DC law firm Parker, Waichman and Alonso gave the US government a Friday deadline to come up with an out-of-court settlement to compensate the survivors and the families of the estimated 700 soldiers, orphans, prisoners and mental health patients who were subjected to the secret sexually transmitted disease (STD) inoculation study from 1946-1948. Since the federal government failed to respond, the lawsuit was filed in US District Court.

Called the Tuskegee Study, the experiments were conducted by John Cutler, a US Public Health Service medical officer. No one knew about the study until a history professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts last year discovered Cutler's unpublished papers. The revelations were made public last October by the US State Department and health officials. President Barack Obama has issued an apology, but the revelation sparked outrage in Guatemala.

According to the records of the study, doctors infected the subjects with STDs, including syphilis, to determine the efficacy of penicillin. The organizers of the experiments had tried unsuccessfully to initiate a similar study program at a federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana.

"The medical team and US entities took advantage of the fact that ethical limitations in the United States were enforced, while in Guatemala, they were not," according to the complaint filed in US District Court.

The lawsuit states that the methods used to infect the subjects were "both unprecedented and unequivocally impermissible in the United States and throughout the civilized world."

To infect soldiers and prisoners the Public Health Service used prostitutes who carried diseases, as well as penile injections. US officials bribed their way into the national orphanage and mental institution by providing members of staff with cigarettes and medication that was in scarce supply, such as malaria treatments. "Worse still, most of the officials at the mental asylum thought at first that 'inoculation' was just another type of drug, not actively being affected," the lawsuit said.

In a separate development, Guatemalans were shocked Tuesday over the massacre of six youths, including two children, by alleged drug traffickers. Authorities found the bodies of the six victims by the San Mauricio river, near the town of Azacualpilla, after their families had reported them missing. All the victims had been given a coup de grace bullet to the head. According to one mother, her three sons went to river with some friends on Monday but never returned. The families alerted police. The two young boys were aged nine and 12.

Murders of children are at an all-time high in Guatemala. According to Human Rights Office of the Archdiocese, 1,635 children died in violent circumstances last year in the Central American country.