U.S. apologizes for experiment that infected Guatemalans with syphilis

The United States apologized to Guatemala on Friday for a 1940s research program in which Guatemalans were intentionally infected with the sexually transmitted disease syphilis without their knowledge or consent.

Between 1946 and 1948, the agency then known as the U.S. Public Health Service infected Guatemalan sex workers, prison inmates, and mental health patients with syphilis. The program was conducted in order to examine whether penicillin, relatively new at the time, could be used to treat the disease. It was led by John Cutler, the U.S. doctor who later led the infamous Tuskegee experiment, in which African American men in Alabama infected with syphilis were observed without receiving treatment.