When we are young, our parents and teachers teach us time and time again that a meaningful apology can fix anything, but at some point it becomes necessary to ask ourselves—does sorry really suffice?
On Friday, October 1, Secretary of State, Hilary Rodham Clinton and the Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Sebeluis, publicly apologized to the Guatemalan government for unethical medical crimes done against their people over sixty years ago. In a case like this, sorry is not enough.
Beginning in the 1940s, the United States Public Health Service began to do research testing if penicillin could prevent early syphilis infection, the possibilities of more efficient blood tests for this disease, the proper dosage of penicillin to cure infection, and how re-infection happened upon initial clearance. Because of their inability to grow syphilis in a laboratory and the failures of animal testing, American doctors thought it to be necessary to test penicillin on human subjects. After a brief attempt to inject prisoners at the Terre Haute Federal Penitentiary in Indiana with gonorrhea from a lab, the US government gained clearance from Guatemala to conduct their studies there.
So between the years 1946 and 1948, American public health doctors, led by Dr. John C. Cutler—a primary doctor in the Tuskegee experiments—purposely infected almost seven-hundred Guatemalans with diseases in an attempt to learn more about penicillin. Though cleared by the Guatemalan government, their subjects were left completely unaware of the experiments. Doctors specifically targeted prisoners, mental patients, and soldiers and primarily used infected prostitutes as a way infect the test subjects. And when that didn’t work, they often poured the bacteria into scrapes on their penises, faces, or arms. Other times, spinal punctures transferred the diseases to the patients. Though the test subjects were given antibiotics upon infection, it is unclear about how many of them were actually cured.
Despite the fact that these unethical medical practices happened over sixty years ago, it was only in May of last year that Wellesley College medical historian, Susan Reverby made this discovery. She found this information hidden among some of the works of Dr. Cultler at the University of Pennsylvania and immediately decided to do further research on the subject.
This new discovery brings to light many issues in the field of medical ethics. Most importantly though, it highlights the importance of constantly re-evaluating our guidelines of human experimentation. Even though we have made great advances since this “dark chapter in the history of medicine”, as termed by the National Institute of Health’s director, Dr. Francis S. Collins, more information is being uncovered about similar medical scandals. For example, in the 1960s, researchers infected mentally retarded children of the Willowbrook State School on Staten Island with hepatitis, and around the same time, elderly patients from the Brooklyn Jewish Chronic Disease Center were injected with live cancer cells. It is important that we go beyond an apology and take it as further incentive to continue to improve the conditions we abide by in medicine. We must not repeat this, and use history as a way to continue our quest towards finding the best solutions for medical advancement.
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Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/02/health/research/02infect.html?_r=1&hp
http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/health/104158238.html?page=3&c=y
http://www.startribune.com/politics/104165213.html?elr=KArksUUUoDEy3LGDiO7aiU
http://www.wellesley.edu/WomenSt/fac_reverby.html
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