Making Medical Subjects

Regeneration, Experimentation, and Women in the Guatemalan Spring

Bibliographic Data

ID2831964
AuthorsLydia Crafts (corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume102
Issue2
Pages251-284
Publication date2022-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHispanic American Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0018-2168 • E-ISSN: 1527-1900
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/00182168-9653491
OpenAlexW4280556185
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited48

In the 1940s, US and Guatemalan doctors working with the Pan American Sanitary Bureau (PASB) intentionally exposed at least 1,308 Guatemalan sex workers, prisoners, hospital patients, and soldiers to three sexually transmitted infections (STIs)-syphilis, gonorrhea, and chancroid. The doctors aimed to study the transmission of disease and the effects of penicillin and other chemical solutions in preventing the spread of STIs. This article examines how US and Guatemalan doctors weaponized a bureaucratic registration system to study STIs at what they deemed their main vector-sex workers. The experiments served the purposes of the Guatemalan Revolution (1944-54), a democratizing moment when doctors and political leaders aimed to spur national regeneration. This essay argues that Guatemala's activist state was a critical enabling factor granting US researchers access to Guatemalans' genitals and blood for experimentation

Bureaucracy · Chancroid · Family medicine · Gonorrhea · Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Syphilis · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Gender Studies · Law · Medicine · Sex work and related issues

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