7 Cruel Medical Experiments

Guatemala STD testing is only the latest to come to light
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 10, 2010 12:00 PM CDT
7 Awful Medical Experiments
File illustration of a vaccination.   (Shutterstock)

The US scheme to infect Guatemalans with STDs in the 1940s is far from the only ethically challenged experiment in medical annals. LiveScience rounds up 6 more of the worst:

  • Tuskegee: The granddaddy of such lapses. The US studied the progression of syphilis in 399 black men from 1932 to 1972. The subjects never received proper treatment—and were told only that they had "bad blood."

  • Surgery on slaves: The man known as the father of modern gynecology, J. Marion Sims, conducted experimental surgeries on slave women. Whether the subjects would have chosen to participate if they had the choice remains a fierce topic of debate to this day.
  • Japan tests: Japan conducted biological warfare and medical tests on civilians, mostly in China, in the 1930s and '40s. In some cases, wells were infected with cholera and typhoid. As many as 200,000 people may have died.
For the rest, including Nazi doctor Josef Mengele's brutality, click here.
(More ethics stories.)

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