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The U.S. experiments on over 5,000 Guatemalan people to study sexually transmitted infections.

1946

The Story of Disability Justice
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Funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS), and the Pan American Sanitary Bureau, a study is launched on "venereal diseases," including syphilis and gonorrhea, with the cooperation of Guatemalan authorities, but without participants' informed consent.

Over 5,000 people are experimented on, primarily from what are seen as the country's most "vulnerable populations," including sex workers, people with mental health disabilities, incarcerated people, and soldiers.

Participants are infected with multiple strains of sexually transmitted infections. Among the experiments is the study of gonorrhea that originally began at the Terre Haute U.S. Penitentiary (see 1944). The study is moved to Guatemala after the researchers run into roadblocks in Indiana. This experiment is led by John Charles Cutler, who was also involved in the Tuskegee experiments.

The Guatemalan experiments result in at least 83 deaths. The details of these forced experiments will not be released into the public domain until 2005.