WASHINGTON ? The United States apologized Friday for a study conducted more than 60 years ago in Guatemala in which US-led researchers infected hundreds of people with syphilis and gonorrhea without their consent.
The study conducted between 1946 and 1948 was "clearly unethical", Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a statement issued jointly with Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, in which the two officials extended an apology to "all the individuals who were affected by such abhorrent research practices."
Clinton told Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom by phone of her "personal outrage and deep regret that such reprehensible research could have occurred," Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela told reporters.
Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the US government body that funded the study, called it "deeply disturbing" and "an appalling example in a dark chapter in the history of medicine."
Senator Robert Menendez, a member of the congressional Hispanic caucus, called the experiments in Guatemala one of the "darkest moments" in US history.
"No innocent fellow human should be treated as a lab rat, no matter your nationality," Menendez said.
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