With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Guatemalan syphilis experiment: in the name of public health?

Of course everyone has heard by now the appalling discovery unearthed by Wellesley College professor, Susan Reverby on how the US Public Health Service (a medical branch of the US government) conducted clearly unethical and dangerous syphilis experiments in Guatemala in the mid-40s....

Cutler, the government physician, would also take part in the equally abhorrent US government sponsored Tuskegee Syphilis Study.

Do you think Cutler was just a rogue doctor performing dangerous experiments on unsuspecting foreigners in another land? Though clearly Cutler agreed with the goals of the experiments he certainly wasn’t alone in this. At least two agencies under the Truman administration were direct co-sponsors in this dastardly deed; in addition to the PHS, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was involved and the global health organization, Pan American Health Organization....
Read entire article at Examiner.com