WIKIMEDIA, STETHOSCOPESJohns Hopkins University and other institutions are facing an up-to-$1 billion lawsuit brought by nearly 800 research participants and their families regarding experiments conducted in Guatemala during the 1940s that involved some participants getting sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) like gonorrhea, The Baltimore Sun reported yesterday (April 1). In August 2011, a US federal bioethics commission released a report detailing its probe of the experiments, finding ethical misconduct. A year earlier, President Barack Obama apologized to the participants and their families.
This latest suit, filed in Baltimore Circuit Court, also names the Rockefeller Foundation and Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) as defendants, The Sun reported. Officials at both Johns Hopkins and Rockefeller told the newspaper they found the experiments “deplorable . . . unconscionable,” and “morally repugnant,” respectively, while BMS officials declined to comment.
Still, Johns Hopkins spokesperson Kim Hoppe told The Sun that the suit “is an attempt by plaintiffs’ counsel to exploit a historic tragedy for monetary gain.” Hoppe noted that researchers, ethicists, and clinicians at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere have cooperated with government officials to establish ethical standards for clinical research “for more than half a century since the time of the Guatemala study.” A Rockefeller spokesperson told The Sun that the foundation “did not ...
