Guatemala: Syphilis experience involved 1,300 (AP)

GUATEMALA city - a survey conducted by the Guatemalan authorities has identified approximately 1,300 people who may have been involved in an experience of syphilis in the U.S. in the 1940s, some of them may still be alive, Vice President Rafael Espada said Wednesday.

The research of the hospital, Department of health, military and prison records identified approximately 1,300 people who were infected with syphilis or gonorrhea without their consent.

"As of today, we found three or four patients who are still alive," said Espada. ".

The official results of the investigation should have been presented this week, but were delayed when the Government was to turn its attention to the massacre of 27 people suspected drug traffickers in the Northern Peten province.

No new date was set for the publication of the report.

Records discovered United States in 2010 suggested was that researchers in the programme in the years 1940 attempted to infect about 700 prostitutes, prisoners and the mentally ill with syphilis. Approximately 770 subjects of tests, including soldiers, have been exposed to gonorrhea.

Guatemalan authorities had expected to find some 1,500 victims. It was not clear whether some members of the study were infected with success, some were infected with both diseases, or if the Guatemala was unable to identify all over 60 years later.

Patients were treated with penicillin. Among the objectives of the research was to see how well different doses of penicillin worked against various venereal diseases.

Espada said about 10 doctors Guatemalan American and 12 have been involved in the study of two years.

The Guatemalan Government of plans run announcements in the months to come, which seeks to identify individuals who have been victims of the research program.

In October, the US President Barack Obama called Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom to apologize. Earlier, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of health and the Services Kathleen Sebelius issued a statement saying: "we are outraged that these reprehensible research could occur under the guise of public health."

Experience funded by the NIH, which took place from 1946 to 1948, was discovered by a medical historian Wellesley College. She apparently has been carried out to verify if penicillin, then relatively new, could prevent sexually transmitted infections. The study has come up with any useful information and was hidden for decades.

The Government of Guatemala has not yet taken a position on what type of repairs should be made in the case.

Espada, which itself is a medical doctor, noted that an international medical Congress was held in the Guatemala at the time of the experience, and that "the international medical community know about it."

Espada said the doctors who participated in the study – led by an American and a Guatemalan doctor, now the two dead - "stressed they wanted very pure races" to experiment on.

The Guatemala population is overwhelmingly Indian Maya.

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Documents: Guatemalan commends U.S. syphilis doctor (AP)

ATLANTA - the Guatemala U.S. physicians have also been summary of one of the more contrary to medical ethics that they had never carried out, a medical official Guatemalan rented as noble principal investigator and thanked profusely.

More than 60 years ago letter praising the Guatemalan official is among the thousands of documents published Tuesday on the doctor who led the study that have infected the Guatemalan prison inmates and the mentally ill with syphilis in the 1940s.

The discs released by the National Archives reveal new information on Guatemalan officials involvement in research, well that it is not clear if they were aware of all the details of what the doctors United States were.

The documents that belonged to researcher U.S. Public Health Service Dr John c. Cutler were formerly housed at the University of Pittsburgh but resides in the dark until a medical historian discovered their. The international press for its conclusion in October, when the Government of the United States recognized research had taken place, and apologized for it.

The President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called President Guatemala, Alvaro Colom, to apologize personally.

Embassy Guatemala official Fernando de la Cerda, said that his country had never known anything about the experience until Clinton made the call.

But indicated that just as the experience was buried by medical officials at the United States, it was also known and they apparently forgotten at the Guatemala.

Indeed, it was a Guatemalan, who first proposed the country as a framework for research. The idea comes from Dr. Juan Funes, Chief of the division of control of venereal diseases of the national health service of the Guatemala, who was assigned to a public health laboratory, in New York for a year Cutler wrote in a summary of the study.

1946-48, The Service of public health of the United States and the Pan American Sanitary Bureau has worked with several agencies of the Government of Guatemala to study - paid by the Government of the United States - involving a deliberately exposing subjects to sexually transmitted diseases.

Researchers attempted to infect about 700 prostitutes, prisoners and the mentally ill with syphilis. Approximately 770 subjects of tests, including soldiers, have been exposed to gonorrhea.

Patients were treated with penicillin. Among the objectives of the research was to see how well different doses of penicillin worked against various venereal diseases.

But Cutler records were not kept with other documents of the Government, and apparently its summaries of the works were never published in a medical journal.

Researchers American command were firm of research, and it is not clear if each involved Guatemalan official knew all the details of the work of U.S. physicians. The Director of the psychiatric hospital - who gave permission to his patients to be participants in the study - apparently did not know that they have granted the disease, said Susan Reverby, Wellesley College historian who discovered the records of the study.

But there is no record of any Guatemalan expressing ethical scruples with what they knew not.

Quite the contrary: Dr. Roberto Robles Chinchilla, Penetenciaria Guatemala Central medical administrator, wrote Cutler to "eternal gratitude" for "Gentleman and noble way in which you reduce the suffering" of prisoners of the penitentiary.

"You have really been a philanthropist," he wrote in December 1948, as Cutler was finishing the major part of his research there.

The perception of Philanthropy was understandable. Search U.S. money paid for a new laboratory in the national service of public health in the construction of Guatemela headquarters.

Asylum of crazy poorly equipped where much of the research of syphilis has been conducted, U.S. paid search for drugs antiepileptics-cruelly metal cups and plates, a new large refrigerator and even a projector of film for the entertainment of the residents.

Patients who participated were rewarded with cigarettes, not to mention the attention that they had already obtained not prior to the installation of lack of personnel and reconnaissance. Some were thus draws exuberant that they always tried to return to doctors of extra blood or other procedures, Cutler wrote.

But it is doubtful, that they understood the potential harms that they risked being infected. Some mentally ill did not even know their own name, he wrote.

Cutler, was later involved in the notorious Tuskegee study, another form of research in which black men in Alabama, who already had syphilis were followed by but not processed.

In 1990, Cutler donated a collection of approximately 12,000 pages of correspondence, reports, photographs and records of patients at the University of Pittsburgh. Cutler died in 2003.

The National Archives announced records in line with a press release. "It is another example of the commitment of the employees of the National Archives of transparency", Archivist of the United States David s. Ferriero said in a prepared statement.

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Test gets almost of cases of syphilis of 1 to 5 bad (AP)

The ATLANTA - hundreds of people may have learned that they tested positive for syphilis when they had not really the disease, health authorities say.

A study of five laboratories U.S. shows approximately 18% of the positive results of a method of test used since the 1980s have summer actually negative, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.

Experts believed the statistics was much lower - less than 7%.

The CDC recommends that additional tests when this test gives a positive result. But even though most physicians in retest, new research suggests that some people have unnecessarily worried that they have been infected with a sexually transmissible disease sadly famous.

There is also some patients received unnecessary treatment - probably the penicillin, which can have side effects.

Syphilis screening is recommended for all pregnant women and people considered at high risk for sexually transmitted diseases.

But officials of the CDC said it is not clear how widely used the problematic test method is more traditional versus, another.

Test problem, which is less expensive than the alternative, has an advantage: "He don't miss people who are infected," said Dr. Karen Hoover, a CDC epidemiologist who co-author of the study.

But it is not perfect to distinguish in the blood of antibodies to syphilis of other proteins, which means that sometimes gives a result positive for something other than syphilis, said scientists at the CDC.

Only about 14,000 Americans were most contagious forms of syphilis, but the number has increased in recent years. 14 000 Cases are those whose symptoms are confirmed with care, so the conclusion of the new study does not affect this count.

Hoover research is published this week in CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

___

Online:

CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr

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Guatemalan continue most of the 1940s us experiences syphilis (AP)

WASHINGTON - Guatemalan submitted to U.S. syphilis experiments in the 1940s continuing federal health officials to compensate health problems that they have suffered.

The prosecution comes after revelations that the United States scientists study the effects of penicillin, in 1940s deliberately infected approximately 700 prisoners Guatemalan mentally ill soldiers and orphans. None were advised or has consented.

Lawyers representing the Guatemalan spill asked Obama administration put in place a process of extra-judicial claims similar to those established in the oil from the Gulf of the Mexico and the terror of 9/11 attacks. But they say that they received no response within a period of Friday and has therefore filed the suit Monday morning.

Guatemalan experiments have hidden for decades, until a medical historian discovered the recordings in 2009.

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