Abstract

In 2010, historian Susan Reverby made public her discovery of the now notorious U.S.–Guatemalan S.T.D. experiments. More than 1300 Guatemalans had been intentionally exposed to syphilis, gonorrhea, and/or canchroid in nonconsensual experiments funded by Johns Hopkins, the Rockefeller Foundation, Bristol Myers-Squibb, and Mead Johnson and carried out by the U.S.P.H.S and Guatemalan health officials in collaboration with the Pan American Health Organization in 1946–48. The purpose of the experiments was to help develop more effective means of preventing and diagnosing STDs. Subjects included prisoners, sex workers, military personnel, and psychiatric patients. The experiments included exposure to STDs through...