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At least 83 people died in US research on sexually transmitted diseases in Guatemala in the 1940s, a commission ordered by President Barack Obama concluded Monday。 The Guatemalan study, which was never published, came to light in 2010 after Wellesley College Professor Susan Reverby stumbled upon archived documents outlining the experiment led by controversial US doctor John Cutler。 Cutler and his fellow researchers enrolled 1,500 detainees in Guatemala, including mental patients, for the study, which aimed to find out if penicillin could be used to prevent sexually transmitted diseases。 Initially, the researchers infected female Guatemalan commercial sex workers with gonorrhea or syphilis, and then encouraged them to have unprotected sex with soldiers or prison inmates。 Neither was the subjects told what the purpose of the research was nor were they warned of its potentially fatal consequences。 "We believe that there were 83 deaths and fewer than 700 people received some form of treatment as best as could be documented,” said Stephen Hauser a member of the commission。 "It was not an accident that this happened in Guatemala," Commission president Amy Gutmann said. "Some of the people involved said they could not do this in their own country." The US researchers "systematically failed to show minimal respect for human rights and act in accordance with morality in the conduct of research," she said, citing "substantial evidence" of an attempted cover-up。 | 
