From 1946-1948, a team of medical researchers in the United
States Public Health Service intentionally infected more than
1,300 Guatemalan prison inmates, psychiatric patients,
commercial sex workers and soldiers with sexually transmitted
diseases. The team also used children in diagnostic testing.
Done completely without consent, their experiments resulted in a
living hell for many of their subjects. Today the Presidential
Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues delivered a report
to President Obama that details this shameful chapter in
American medical history. The Commission concludes that those
involved in this research violated the ethical standards not
only of our time but also of theirs. As is evident by their own
internal communications—and the fact that just a few years
earlier they obtained the informed consent of prisoners in Terre
Haute, Indiana before conducting experiments there—these doctors
also were morally culpable: they knew there was a moral
requirement to obtain informed consent. Bu