Guatemalans deliberately infected with STDs sue Johns Hopkins University for $1bnLawsuit with 800 plaintiffs seeks damages for individuals, spouses and children of people deliberately infected with STDs through US government programme
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Marta Orellana was experimented on when she was nine. Photograph: Rory Carroll/Guardian
Oliver Laughland (https://www.theguardian.com/profile/laughland-oliver) in New York@oliverlaughland
(http://twitter.com/oliverlaughland)
Thursday 2 April 2015 22.59 BSTFirst published on Thursday 2 April 2015 13.31 BST
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Nearly 800 plaintiffs have launched a billion-dollar lawsuit against Johns Hopkins University over its alleged role in the deliberate infection of hundreds of vulnerable Guatemalans with sexually transmitted diseases, including syphilis and gonorrhoea, during a medical experiment programme in the 1940s and 1950s.
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Guatemala victims of US syphilis study still haunted by the 'devil's experiment'Read more
The lawsuit, which also names the philanthropic Rockefeller Foundation, alleges that both institutions helped "design, support, encourage and finance" the experiments by employing scientists and physicians involved in the tests, which were designed to ascertain if penicillin could prevent the diseases.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine held "substantial influence" over the commissioning of the research programme by dominating panels that approved federal funding for the research, the suit claims.
The lawsuit asserts that a researcher paid by the Rockefeller Foundation was assigned to the experiments, which he travelled to inspect on at least six occasions.
The suit also claims that predecessor companies of the pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb supplied penicillin for use in the experiments, which they knew to be both secretive and non-consensual.
The experiments, which occurred between 1945 and 1956, were kept secret until they were discovered in 2010 by a college professor, Sunited snakesn Reverby. The programme published no findings and did not inform Guatemalans who were infected of the consequences of their participation, nor did it provide them with follow up medical care or inform them of ways to prevent the infections spreading, the lawsuit states.
Orphans, prisoners and mental health patients were deliberately infected in the experiments.
The plaintiffs' case quotes the correspondence from one of the programme's lead researchers who tells another doctor that if it were discovered by "some goody organisation" that the programme was testing people who were mentally ill it would "raise a lot of smoke". The manager continues: "I see no reason to say where the work was done and the type of volunteer."
Baltimore-based attorney for the plaintiffs Paul Bekman told the Guardian that of the 774 claimants, about 60 were direct survivors of the programme. Many have died as a result of deliberate infection and others had passed on disease to family members and partners.
"The people who are responsible [for carrying out the research] now are long dead," said Bekman "But the records are there, and we have detailed documentation that supports the allegations in our complaint."
Marta Orellana was a nine-year-old orphan when she was included in the experiments. In an interview with the Guardian in 2011 (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jun/08/guatemala-victims-us-syphilis-study) she recalled being forcibly examined by light-complexioned foreigners and a Guatemalan doctor in the orphanage infirmary.
"They never told me what they were doing, never gave me a chance to say no," Orellana said. "I've lived almost my whole life without knowing the truth. May God forgive them."
Included within the legal claim are graphic descriptions of some of the methods used by the researchers to infect their subjects:
During the experiments, the following occurred:
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- Prostitutes were infected with venereal disease and then provided for sex to subjects for intentional transmission of the disease;
- Subjects were inoculated by injection of syphilis spirochaetes into the spinal fluid that bathes the brain and spinal cord, under the skin, and on mucous membranes;
- An emulsion containing syphilis or gonorrhoea was spread under the foreskin of the penis in male subjects;
- The penis of male subjects was scraped and scarified and then coated with the emulsion containing syphilis or gonorrhea;
- A woman from the psychiatric hospital was injected with syphilis, developed skin lesions and wasting, and then had gonorrhoeal pus from a male subject injected into both of her eyes and;
- Children were subjected to blood studies to check for the presence of venereal disease.
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The then secretary of state Hillary Clinton apologised for the programme (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/oct/01/us-apology-guatemala-syphilis-tests) in 2010 after a presidential bioethics commission (http://bioethics.gov/node/654) investigation found the experiments "involved unconscionable basic violations of ethics".
A federal lawsuit for damages under the Federal Tort Claims Act failed in 2012 after a judge determined the US government cannot be held liable for actions outside the US. Bekman told the Guardian he believed the new lawsuit stood a greater chance of success as it was lodged in the state court of Maryland (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/maryland) and against private entities.
Both Johns Hopkins University and the Rockefeller Foundation have vigorously denied any involvement in the experiments.
A spokeswoman for Johns Hopkins School of Medicine said the institute expressed "profound sympathy" for the victims of the experiments and their families, but added: "Johns Hopkins did not initiate, pay for, direct of conduct the study in Guatemala (https://www.theguardian.com/world/guatemala). No nonprofit university or hospital has ever been held liable for a study conducted by the US government."
The university stated it would "vigorously defend" the lawsuit.
The Rockefeller Foundation issued a detailed response to the claim (http://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/response) online, which it described as seeking to "improperly to assign 'guilt by association' in the absence of compensation from the United States federal government".
The statement continued: "In the absence of a connection to the Rockefeller Foundation, the lawsuit attempts to connect the Foundation to the experiments through misleading characterizations of relationships between the Foundation and individuals who were in some way associated with the experiments."
A spokeswoman for Bristol-Myers Squibb declined to comment.
Guatemala syphilis study: one of many unethical medical experimentsFILED UNDERHEALTHY LIVING (http://www.dallasnews.com/life/healthy-living) ATAPR 2015
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A billion dollar lawsuit (http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/01/meridian-361-law-idUSnPnL95R6+52+PRN20150401) filed against Johns Hopkins University, for its alleged role in unethical medical experiments, highlights the bloody history of medical research sponsored by the U.S. government.
The experiments, in which hundreds of Guatemalan men, women and children were deliberately infected with syphilis and gonorrhea by U.S. doctors, are not an isolated incident. Instead, they’re just one example of the many unethical studies conducted by U.S. medical agencies and funded by American taxpayers.
Between 1945 and 1956, approximately 1,500 Guatemalan orphans, soldiers, mental health patients, prisoners and sex workers were deliberately infected with syphilis and gonorrhea so that the U.S. government could learn about the effectiveness of penicillin.
Some were infected through injections into the spine, others through sex with commercial sex workers who had been infected by U.S. government public health doctors. If that didn’t work, some study subjects had the bacteria rubbed into scrapes on their penises, faces and arms. One woman, a patient in a psychiatric hospital, had pus from a gonorrhea patient injected into both of her eyes,
Academic institutions and government agencies in the U.S. were aware of the study - it was funded by the National Institutes of Health - but study participants did not give their consent. Some were treated with antibiotics, at least one died from the infection.
The lawsuit alleges that Hopkins and another institution, the Rockefeller Foundation, helped to “design, support, encourage and finance” the study. Both institutions deny involvement with the experiments.
The study first came to light in 2005 when a medical historian at Wellesley College, Sunited snakesn Reverby, discovered documents in the archives of the University of Pittsburgh. They were the work of the late Dr. John Cutler, a U.S. Public Health Service doctor who led the study in Guatemala.
President Obama apologized to the Guatemalan government and people in 2010. That was 13 years after President Clinton apologized for another unethical medical study funded by the U.S. government.
From 1932 to 1972, 399 Kmtyw American men (http://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/timeline.htm), mostly sharecroppers from Macon County, Alabama, were deliberately left untreated with syphilis. Even when penicillin became the standard treatment for syphilis in 1947, the men were not told they had the infection. They were told they had “bad blood” and that they were being offered the best possible care. In reality, U.S. Public Health Service doctors experimented on the men as they grew sicker.
By the end of the study, 128 men had died from syphilis and its complications. At least 40 of their wives were infected and 19 of their children were born with syphilis.
It wasn’t just inhumane, it was hypocritical. While the government was conducting unethical research on its own citizens, it was prosecuting Nazi doctors in the Nuremberg trials. Those military tribunals took place in the 1940s in Germany. The Allied Forces, including the U.S. and the U.K., prosecuted 16 doctors for experimenting on prisoners in concentration camps. Seven of the doctors were executed for crimes against humanity.
From this horror came the Nuremberg Code and the Helsinki Declaration written to protect those who participate in medical studies. The Tuskegee scandal also spurred laws to protect the rights of research participants and to ensure that similar atrocities could never occur.
But the Tuskegee and Guatemala studies are just two examples from a long list of unethical medical studies. There are the elderly patients at the Brooklyn Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital who were injected with cancer cells in the 1960s so that researchers could learn about the development of tumors. There are the children at the Willowbrook State School for Children with Mental Retardation in New York City who were infected with hepatitis from 1956 and 1971 so that experimental treatments could be tested.
Some doctors refer to these decades as “medicine’s dark chapter." But it’s a chapter that should not be buried in history books. This lawsuit is a reminder that the consequences of unethical medical experiments are still felt by many across the world.
Dr. Seema Yasmin, a physician and former epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is a staff writer at The Dallas Morning News and a professor at the University of Texas at Dallas. Follow her on Twitter at @DoctorYasmin.
They were just getting started with these crimes. Even worse atrocities are going on today. And yes the methods of concealing their crimes have become more sophisticated, institutionalized and backed by the entire governmental medical industrial complex. The moral vacuum of the "researchers" has not changed.
The AIDS/HIV genocidal deception chemical psychological warfare is the natural evil grandchild and logical outcome of these evil beasts. They have created this lie called HIV and are deliberately poisoning millions with drugs that cause AIDS. ALL THE WHILE CONCEALING THE TRUE NATURE AND CAUSES AND TREATMENT/PREVENTION OF WIDESPREAD IMMUNE DEFICIENCY.
The modus operandi of these evil devils in white coats is repeated and transparent to those of us who have studied the history of the medical industrial chemical criminal complex. Why would we have difficulty believing what they are doing today given what they or their fathers have done in the recent past.
We must at all time remain vigilant and distrustful of all personnel and programs having anything to do with the medical industry whatsoever. The control of the industry is continued by the same entities that have dominated them from day one. The crimes are far worse than ever before.
A leopard no mater what white coat he is wearing does not change his spots.
QuoteNKO;210740 wrote: They were just getting started with these crimes. Even worse atrocities are going on today. And yes the methods of concealing their crimes have become more sophisticated, institutionalized and backed by the entire governmental medical industrial complex. The moral vacuum of the "researchers" has not changed.
The AIDS/HIV genocidal deception chemical psychological warfare is the natural evil grandchild and logical outcome of these evil beasts. They have created this lie called HIV and are deliberately poisoning millions with drugs that cause AIDS. ALL THE WHILE CONCEALING THE TRUE NATURE AND CAUSES AND TREATMENT/PREVENTION OF WIDESPREAD IMMUNE DEFICIENCY.
The modus operandi of these evil devils in white coats is repeated and transparent to those of us who have studied the history of the medical industrial chemical criminal complex. Why would we have difficulty believing what they are doing today given what they or their fathers have done in the recent past.
We must at all time remain vigilant and distrustful of all personnel and programs having anything to do with the medical industry whatsoever. The control of the industry is continued by the same entities that have dominated them from day one. The crimes are far worse than ever before.
A leopard no mater what white coat he is wearing does not change his spots.
@NKO, my father often says that white people's capacity for evil is in their future not in their past.
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