U.S. Government Medical Experiments of the Recent Past Revealed

Medical experiments and research were conducted on disabled, mentally ill and incarcerated people in various studies through the decades, reports PBS Newshour. Not only were America's own citizens used for these experiments, but during the 1940s, hundreds of Guatemalan prisoners were given syphilis. This information came to light in October 2010, at which time the U.S. government issued a formal apology and necessitated the Monday convening of the bioethics commission. The Guatemalan experiment brings to mind the infamous Tuskegee experiment that left nearly 400 Alabama sharecroppers unknowingly untreated for syphilis.

In the 1940s and 1950s, it was common practice in America to use prisoners as test subjects; the 1960s saw at least half the states still allowing the practice reports News-Sentinel.com. By the 1970s, public opinion changed and in 1973 in a congressional hearing, pharmaceutical manufacturers testified that it was cheaper for them to use prisoners in studies than it was to use chimpanzees. This led to reform in the federal prison system; no longer were prisoners to be used in medical experiments or research.

Pharmaceutical companies took their studies abroad. In 2010, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported that 40 percent to 65 percent of clinical studies are now done outside the United States. Less than 1 percent of those are ever inspected by U.S. regulators. The presidential bioethics commission has announced the formation of a 13-member international panel of scientific experts to study the ethics of medical research worldwide.
Yahoo.