U.S. Apologizes for Abusive Guatemala Human Medical Experiments

Earlier this year Wellesley College professor Susan Reverby came upon the unpublished study outlining the 1940s experiment led by controversial U.S. Public Health Service physician John C. Cutler. Cutler and his fellow researchers enrolled people in Guatemala, including mental patients, for the study, which aimed to find out if penicillin, a relatively new drug at the time, could be used to prevent sexually transmitted diseases. Evidently, the study participants never gave informed consent. Rather, many of the subjects were deceived about what was being done to them.