4. Guatemalans Were Deliberately Infected With Syphilis, Gonorrhea, and Other STDs.
In the 1940s, military service for young men in Guatemala was all but obligatory. During that time, the United States government was beginning to do extensive tests on biological warfare and needed test subjects. They became particularly concerned about syphilis, gonorrhea, and other STDs, at least in part because these diseases were costing the military a lot of workforces, amounting to a total of seven million working days being taken off every year by soldiers who suffered from them. Given the nature of other biomedical experiments performed during this period, one can’t rule out the possibility of wanting to infect foreign militaries with the diseases.
The experiments actually began on prison inmates, who were promised $100 in exchange for being intentionally infected with an STD and then given a prophylactic, which was believed to prevent the disease from developing. It proved to be a bust, so the experimenters decided to move to a population that was, in their minds at least, even more, expendable than prisoners: Guatemalans. The experimenters began by infecting prostitutes, who were then encouraged to have sex with soldiers to see how quickly the disease would spread. They went on to apply the pathogens directly onto the soldiers’ bodies and even injected them into their bloodstreams.
The experiments came to light in 2003, when researchers at Wellesley University were trying to study the Tuskegee syphilis experiment (see below). It turns out, some of the researchers from the Guatemalan experiment went on to spearhead the Tuskegee one. In 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton formally apologized for what happened, but the damage to so many Guatemalans and their offspring was already done.