WASHINGTON – A US presidential commission was due to release its findings yesterday on a government research project that deliberately infected Guatemalan prison inmates and mental patients with syphilis in the 1940s.
The conclusions will impact on the ethical discussion surrounding how new drugs are tested on patients, as manufacturers increasingly conduct clinical trials abroad.
The United States formally apologised last year for the experiment, which was meant to test the drug penicillin, after it was uncovered decades later by a college professor. – (Reuters)