Advocates for careful ethical controls on human experimentation often point to the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment (1932-1972) in which government scientists working for the Public Health Service deliberately refrained from treating almost 400 poor black farmers for their syphilis. Instead, the men were told they had 'Bad Blood' and were given years of examinations so researchers could collect data on the etiology (development) of the disease.
The Boston Globe is now reporting that Wellesley's Susan Reverby has discovered the U.S. conducted similar experiments during the 1940's in Guatemala, only this time the researches went so far as to deliberately infect their experimental subjects with syphilis. From the article,
Reverby writes that US physicians selected men in a Guatemalan penitentiary and army barracks as well as men and women in a mental hospital for the study. Initially, the researchers used prostitutes to attempt to infect the prisoners. When that approach largely failed, the doctors then "did direct inoculations made from syphilis bacteria poured onto the men's penises or on forearms and faces that were slightly abraded."