On April 1, 2015, at least
774 known
plaintiffs filed suit
against Johns Hopkins University over the University’s alleged role in medical
experiments in Guatemala dating back to the 1940’s and 1950s. The suit alleges
that hundreds involved were deliberately infected with sexually transmitted
diseases as part of a United States-backed government program. The lawsuit
seeks $1 billion dollars in damages for
individuals, spouses, and children of the victims, who were infected with diseases
such as syphilis, chlamydia, and gonorrhea.The
lawsuit’s defendants are listed as Johns Hopkins University, their various
affiliated medical institutions, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Bristol-Myers
Squibb Company, a New York-based pharmaceutical company. The complaint alleges that prominent John Hopkins faculty members participated on
a government committee that reviewed funding applications, making them
complicit in conducting the research itself. The complaint goes on to allege
that the Rockefeller Foundation funded research initiatives taken by Johns
Hopkins in this capacity, including employing scientists who monitored the
experiments. Lastly, Bristol-Meyer Squibb has also been implicated through
allegations that the pharmaceutical company supplied drugs for the experiments.
According
to report compiled by the Presidential Commission for the Study of
Bioethical Issues, a National Research Council subcommittee was responsible for
approving the research project. The studies moved forward once it received
grant funding from the United States National Institutes of Health to the
Pan-American Sanitary Bureau (formerly known as the Pan-American Health
Organization). The studies were eventually carried out by the U.S. Public
Health Service. While the results were never published, public knowledge of the
Guatemalan experiments is not new; as early as 2010, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
apologized for the
experiments, calling them “clearly unethical.” The Presidential Commission subsequently
compiled the report for President Barack Obama, detailing the Commission’s investigation
into the matter.
According
to the Presidential Commission, the initial intent of the study was to find and
examine new ways to prevent STDs. However, the methods utilized to do so
magnify the gross ethical implications arising from otherwise respectable
experiments. For example, the first experiments conducted are said to have
involved infecting prostitutes with various diseases and then allowing them to
have sex with soldiers or prison inmates. Upon contracting such a disease, the
medical research then focused on the newly infected subjects. At least 1,500
study subjects were involved in such practices, including orphans and psychiatric
patients. The crux of the allegations state that none of the subjects were informed
of their infections, causing some to die or pass on the disease to their
spouses, sexual partners, and children.
This
is not the first time the study’s victims have attempted to utilize the court
systems. In 2012, the plaintiffs sued eight government officials over the
study, but the complaint was dismissed by a federal judge on the basis that the
“government could not be held liable for actions committed in another country.”
A new lawsuit was filed in Baltimore as a result.
The
case against Johns Hopkins brings to light similar claims of ethical abuse in
the medical field. Perhaps the most prominent example is that of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study in Macon County, Alabama, also conducted
by the United States Public Health Service. In the Tuskegee Study, a community
of black men were infected with syphilis to serve the purpose of “determin[ing]
the natural course of untreated syphilis in black males” versus that of white
subjects. The participants were left believing they were given appropriate
care, but were instead given placebos. Approximately 400 men were involved in
the project, with published reports of the study beginning in 1936 and
extending until 1960. The study continued despite the fact that penicillin had
become generally available towards the end. After various news stories broke
regarding the inhumane and unethical study, the United States attempted to
remedy the injustice committed on their behalf with the passage of the National
Research Act, which created the National Commission for the Protection of Human
Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. However, the United States did
not accept responsibility to the participants until 1997, when President Bill
Clinton issued
a formal apology.
These
horrifying legacies of medical research have had major implications for the
sciences as well as the nation at large. It has been widely recognized that the
legacy of the Tuskegee study has led to a distrust between American minorities and the biomedical
research field. According to studies conducted by the Tuskegee Legacy Project,
African Americans are more likely than white Americans to fear participation in
medical experiments. This is particularly plausible given that the “medical
community in the United States was aware of the experiments throughout the course of the study”,
with at least “thirteen articles…published documenting the results and course
of inquiry”.
The
complaint also emerges at an interesting period for the United States, given
the most recent events regarding interactions between American minorities and
the police department. However, this complaint also presents an even more
disturbing view of the role of medical research in not only perpetuating
domestic racial discrimination, but often their direct role or complicity in
undiscussed or often buried histories of colonialism abroad, particularly in
Central and South America. While the lawsuit is relatively fresh procedurally,
it encourages a discussion and re-evaluation of medical ethics, a re-emerging
field of study in light of exciting biomedical developments regarding genetic
therapies and new ways of thinking about medicine. It also further emphasizes the intersection
between medicine, culture, and politics, demonstrating that science is never
truly, objectively removed from society at large; rather, it is very much
informed by those who define the parameters of the practice from the very
beginning.
Samantha Grund-Wickramasekera is
currently a law student and Jaharis Health Law Fellow at DePaul University of
College of Law. Ms. Grund-Wickramasekera completed her Bachelor of Arts at
DePaul University, double majoring in Political Science and Women's and Gender
Studies, minoring in LGBTQ Studies in 2014. She will complete her law degree in
2017.