美国曾用囚犯和精神病患者做性病实验

At least 83 people died in US research on sexually transmitted diseases in Guatemala in the 1940s, a commission ordered by President Barack Obama concluded Monday。

The Guatemalan study, which was never published, came to light in 2010 after Wellesley College Professor Susan Reverby stumbled upon archived documents outlining the experiment led by controversial US doctor John Cutler。

Cutler and his fellow researchers enrolled 1,500 detainees in Guatemala, including mental patients, for the study, which aimed to find out if penicillin could be used to prevent sexually transmitted diseases。

Initially, the researchers infected female Guatemalan commercial sex workers with gonorrhea or syphilis, and then encouraged them to have unprotected sex with soldiers or prison inmates。

Neither was the subjects told what the purpose of the research was nor were they warned of its potentially fatal consequences。

"We believe that there were 83 deaths and fewer than 700 people received some form of treatment as best as could be documented,” said Stephen Hauser a member of the commission。

"It was not an accident that this happened in Guatemala," Commission president Amy Gutmann said. "Some of the people involved said they could not do this in their own country."

The US researchers "systematically failed to show minimal respect for human rights and act in accordance with morality in the conduct of research," she said, citing "substantial evidence" of an attempted cover-up。

Some experts have claimed that the research came up with no useful medical information。

Obama personally apologized to Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom in October before ordering a thorough review of what happened。

Meanwhile, The Guatemalan president has called the 1946-1948 experiments conducted by the US National Institutes of Health "crimes against humanity"。据法新社8月29日报道，美国总统巴拉克-奥巴马任命的调查委员会本周一(29日)证实，上世纪40年代美国在危地马拉进行的性传播疾病实验造成至少83人死亡。

这项在危地马拉进行的实验是由一名备受争议的美国医生约翰•卡特负责的，该实验直到2010年才被公布于世。当时韦尔斯利学院的教授苏珊•里维尔比偶然发现了这些概述该实验的存档文件。

为了开展该实验课题，卡特和他的研究伙伴们共招收了1500名包括精神病患者在内的危地马拉在押人员，目的是验证青霉素可否用于性病防治。

起初，研究人员给危地马拉的女性性工作者“接种”了淋病或梅毒病毒，然后再让她们与士兵或囚犯进行没有采取保护措施的性行为。

研究人员既没有告知受试者实验的目的，也没有警告受试者实验可能导致他们失去生命。

调查委员会成员史蒂芬•豪泽说：“我们确信(在该实验中)有83人死亡，而现有文件只能证明，当时只有不足700人接受了某种形式的治疗。”

委员会主席艾米•古德曼说：“这不是发生在危地马拉的一起意外事件。参与该实验的一些人表示，他们不会在自己的国家做这种事。”

她认为美国研究人员“没有给予人权最起码的尊重，在实验过程中违背了人伦道德”，而且也有“足够证据”证明研究人员曾试图掩盖事实真相。

一些专家称，该研究根本不能得到任何有用的医学信息。

去年10月，奥巴马亲自向危地马拉总统阿尔瓦罗•柯隆表示了歉意，随后下令彻查这件事。

同时，危地马拉总统称这项由美国国立卫生研究院在1946至1948年进行的实验“违反了人类道德”。