( CNN ) Remember the Tuskegee syphilis experiment from the 1930s ? Scientists studied poor African-Americans in Alabama who 'd contracted the venereal disease but did n't tell them they had the disease or do anything to cure them . A lawsuit filed this week alleges Johns Hopkins University and the Rockefeller Foundation helped conduct a similar study in Guatemala from 1945 to 1956 . Orphans , inmates , psychiatric patients and prostitutes were deliberately infected with sexually transmitted diseases to determine what drugs , including penicillin , worked best in stopping the diseases , the lawsuit says . The subjects of the experiments were n't told they 'd been infected , the lawsuit says , causing some to die and others to pass the disease to their spouses , sexual partners and children . The suit seeks more than $ 1 billion in damages and has 774 plaintiffs , including people who were subjects in the experiments and their descendants . This is the second attempt to collect damages . In 2012 , a class-action federal lawsuit was filed against the U.S. government over the Guatemala experiments conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service . A judge dismissed it , saying the Guatemalans could not sue the United States for grievances that happened overseas . The new lawsuit was filed in the Baltimore City Circuit Court . Johns Hopkins and the Rockefeller Foundation filed statements on their websites condemning the experiments , but denying responsibility . `` The plaintiffs ' essential claim in this case is that prominent Johns Hopkins faculty members ' participation on a government committee that reviewed funding applications was tantamount to conducting the research itself and that therefore Johns Hopkins should be held liable , '' the Johns Hopkins statement said . `` Neither assertion is true . '' The lawsuit alleges the Rockefeller Foundation funded Johns Hopkins ' research into public health issues , including venereal disease , and employed scientists who monitored the Guatemala experiments . The lawsuit , the Rockefeller Foundation statement said , `` seeks improperly to assign 'guilt by association ' in the absence of compensation from the United States federal government . '' The suit says Johns Hopkins and the Rockefeller Foundation designed , supported and benefited from the Guatemala experiments . Bristol-Myers Squibb pharmaceutical group and that company 's owner , Mead Johnson , also are defendants . The pharmaceutical company supplied drugs for the experiments , the suit says . On Saturday , a spokeswoman for Bristol-Myers Squibb sent this statement to CNN : `` We 've only just received the complaint in this matter . Bristol-Myers Squibb played an important role in the development of penicillin in the past and today we continue to focus our work on developing breakthrough medicines for serious disease . As a company dedicated to patients , we take this matter very seriously and are reviewing the allegations . '' Nobody doubts the experiments happened . In 2010 , then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton apologized to Guatemala for the experiments , saying they were `` clearly unethical . '' In the 1930s and 1940s , the government followed a policy of funding scientific medical research but not controlling individual doctors , the suit says . The lawsuit says John Hopkins controlled and influenced the appointed panels that authorized funding for research into venereal disease . The lawsuit says prostitutes were infected to intentionally spread the disease and that syphilis spirochetes were injected into the spinal fluid of subjects . A woman in a psychiatric hospital had gonorrhea pus from a male subject injected into both her eyes , the suit says . The lawsuit does n't say why the experiments ended . The results were never published and were not revealed until 2011 , when the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues wrote a letter to President Barack Obama telling of its investigation , the suit says . CNN 's Deanna Hackney contributed to this report .
Lawsuit says scientists infected hundreds of Guatemalans with sexually transmitted diseases . The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California by a group called Physicians Without Borders and other groups that have been critical of the Bush administration's handling of bioterrorism.