President Obama’s Health and Human Services (HHS) committed $1.8 million for treatment and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases (STD) in Guatemala today, the day after the Justice Department (DOJ) argued in court that Guatemalans cannot sue the United States over a reported government research conducted in the 1940s that intentionally infected people.
“[HHS] will invest approximately $1.8 million to increase its efforts to improve the treatment and prevention of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases (STD) in Guatemala and to further strengthen ethical training on human research protections,” HHS announced this morning, explaining that this foreign aid reflects Obama’s “commitment to ensuring that the United States has the strongest possible human subject protections at home and around the world.”
The emphasis on human subject protections reflects the U.S. government’s embarrassment over reported research from the 1940s, in which the U..S. government apparently infected Guatemalan patients with STDs in order to test the effectiveness of penicillin.
“As a result of these unethical studies, a terrible wrong has occurred,” the DOJ wrote in a court filing, yesterday, that objected to Guatemalan attempts to sue the United States. “The United States is committed to taking appropriate steps to address that wrong.”
