President Barack Obama personally apologized to his Guatemalan counterpart for a US-led study conducted in the 1940s, in which hundreds of people in the Latin American state were deliberately infected with sexually-transmitted diseases.
In a phone conversation with Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom, Obama expressed his deep regret for the experiment conducted by US public health researchers in Guatemala between 1946 and 1948, and apologized "to all those affected."
The US president also vowed that all human medical studies conducted today will be held to exacting US and international legal and ethical standards.
"This is shocking, it's tragic, it's reprehensible," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters, adding to apologies and outrage voiced by the president, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and other US officials.
In an impromptu news conference in Guatemala Friday, Colom denounced the study as "a crime against humanity", and said he had learned of the gruesome years-long experiment in the phone call from Clinton.
Clinton had phoned Colom Thursday to express her personal outrage and deep regret over the "reprehensible research."
"What happened all those years ago is a crime against humanity and the government reserves the right to lodge a formal legal complaint over it," Colom said.
But almost immediately, he backed off his tough talk, saying: "We are aware that this is not the policy of the United States... this happened so long ago."
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