Reuters points to research done by Susan Reverby, professor of women’s studies at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. She contacted the US Government and notified them, which led to a formal statement on the syphilis infection in Guatemala that she uncovered.

The United States apologized on Friday for an experiment conducted in the 1940s in which U.S. government researchers deliberately infected Guatemalan prison inmates, women and mental patients with syphilis.

In the experiment, aimed at testing the then-new drug penicillin, inmates were infected by prostitutes and later treated with the antibiotic.

They sent prostitutes into the prison?

I am reminded of an elderly man I met many years ago who said he was a pacifist and conscientious objector in New York City during WWII. He told me being opposed to war at that time meant he was arrested and put in jail; on an island just outside the city. While in jail he was regularly injected with what he thought were “experimental” drugs. Actually, the really scary part of the story is that security was so lax he and other prisoners would sneak out at night and go party all night in the city. Whatever he was injected with was not isolated. Perhaps that was not by accident.