U.S. Issues Apology for Guatemalan Syphilis Experiment 

U.S. officials have apologized for a recently uncovered 1940s medical experiment in which Guatemalan prisoners were deliberately infected with syphilis.

In a Friday joint statement, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Health and
Human Services Kathleen Sebelius said they are “outraged”
that such a study “could have occurred under the guise of
public health.”      

“We deeply regret that it happened, and we apologize to all the
individuals who were affected by such abhorrent research practices,” Clinton, Sebelius, and other top officials said in the apology.

The syphilis inoculation experiment, discovered by Wellesley College women's studies professor and medical historian Susan M. Reverby, used prostitutes to deliberately infect inmates as well as mental health patients and soldiers. Subjects who contracted the disease were then administered antibiotics, The New York Times reports.  

“However, whether everyone was then cured is not clear and not everyone
received what was even then considered adequate treatment,” Reverby wrote in an upcoming article to be published in the Journal of Policy History.