A US federal judge has ruled that pharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb, Johns Hopkins University and the Rockefeller Foundation must face a US$1 billion (RM4 billion) suit over their roles in a 1940s medical experiment that saw hundreds of Guatemalans infected with syphilis.

In 2015, 774 Guatemalan victims and their relatives launched a civil suit over the US-led experiment, which aimed to find out if penicillin could be used to prevent sexually transmitted diseases.

They said the experiment “subjected them or family members to medical experiments in Guatemala without their knowledge or consent during the 1940s and 1950s”.

US district judge Theodore Chuang rejected arguments by the defence that a recent Supreme Court decision protecting foreign companies from US suits over human rights abuses abroad also applied to domestic firms.

He said allowing the case to move forward will “promote harmony” by giving the foreign plaintiffs the opportunity to seek justice in US courts.

The unethical experiment was revealed by Dr Susan Reverby, a professor at Wellesley College in the US.

She came across the work while researching notes left by John Charles Cutler, a public health services sexual disease specialist who headed the experiment, following his death in 2003.

Cutler and fellow researchers enrolled soldiers, mental patients, prostitutes, convicts and others in Guatemala for the study.

Former president Barack Obama in 2010 apologised for the experiment, while his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, described it as “clearly unethical”. – AFP, January 5, 2019.