US: Guatemala tests were 'shocking' double standard

US researchers who exposed hundreds of Guatemalans to sexually transmitted diseases committed "unconscionable basic violations of ethics", a US health commission has found.

Some 1,300 were infected with syphilis, gonorrhoea and other STDs without their knowledge in the 1940s.

Many of the same researchers had earlier sought consent from prisoners in a US study. 

Of these, some 1,300 prisoners, psychiatric patients and sex workers were deliberately infected with syphilis, gonorrhoea or another sexually transmitted disease, chancroid.

Only about 700 received some sort of treatment.

In previous tests by many of the same researchers on prisoners in Terra Haute, Indiana, those participants were asked for their consent....