The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male

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• *** Alert: This Website has been relocated ***
  UNC is discontinuing its Sakai web platform, so Vic Schoenbach has relocated this website - click for more information. https://go.unc.edu/SJAE has links to the earlier site (in Sakai).
• *Final report of theTuskegee Syphilis Study Ad Hoc Advisory Panel
  U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare; Public Health Service. Submitted April 28, 1973 to Charles C. Edwards, Assistant Secretary for Health by Chairman Broadus N. Butler, President, Dillard University with a cover letter that stated, "The Chairman specifically abstains from concurrence in this final report ...". The committee held 12 meetings, from Sept. 22, 1972 to March 28, 1973, and considered the following three charges:
  I. Determine whether the study was justified in 1932 and whether it should have been continued when penicillin became generally available.
  II. Recommend whether the study should be continued at this point in time, and if not, how it should be terminated in a way consistent with the rights and health needs of its remaining participants.
  III. Determine whether existing policies to protect the rights of patients participating in health research conducted or supported by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare are adequate and effective and to recommend improvements in these policies, if needed.
• *Recognition, Remembrance, and Reflection: The Syphilis Study at Tuskegee and Macon County, AL
  This event will acknowledge the 50th anniversary of the end of the United States Public Health Service Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male at Tuskegee and Macon County, Alabama, 1932 -1972. The intention is to create a space for authentic, accurate storytelling and discussion regarding current and future opportunities for public health leaders at CDC and beyond to move from trust to trustworthiness. In person at CDC headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia and webcast live on Wednesday, November 30, 2022, 1:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. ET. Event recording: https://youtu.be/uSI35MAotoc ; Personal Reflections video: https://youtu.be/zwORUkNrMRk
• Bill Jenkins - Voices of the Tuskegee Study (20 min)
  Video produced by Bill Jenkins with survivors of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. See Bill Jenkins' folder in People folder.
• CHOICE/LESS: The Backstory, Episode 4: Tuskegee Was 'The Tip of the Iceberg' (22 min.)
  Jenn Stanley, CHOICE/LESS: The Backstory. Interview with Bill Jenkins. Jun 21, 2017. rewire news group. Includes transcript.
• Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy
  Susan M. Reverby, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009, updates information from Bad Blood, published in 1993.
• Mission Possible: Treat Me Right
  Posted on April 19, 2018 by Jo A. Valentine, MSW, on CDC blog Conversations in Equity. In the fall of 1999, in preparation for the launch of The National Plan to Eliminate Syphilis from the United States, I was asked to draft a letter to the survivors of the U.S. Public Health Service Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male, or the Tuskegee Study as it is usually called. The letter would inform the men about the new program.
• NY Times: Families Emerge as Silent Victims Of Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment
  Carol Kaesuk Yoon, New York Times, May 12, 1997
  It has been 25 years since the nation learned that more than 400 black men infected with syphilis went untreated for decades in a federally financed experiment in this rural Southern town laced with sandy roads and pine forests.
  These men, who are expected to receive a Presidential apology on Friday in Washington, have been the subject of countless academic studies, news articles and books, as well as a play and a made-for-television movie.
  Yet their families -- the wives and children they may have unwittingly exposed to the disease -- have remained largely unseen and unheard, bearing in silence a legacy of anger and shame as well as possible damage to their health. In an acknowledgment of the harm that may have been done, the Federal Government, since 1975, has been quietly running a small program that provides medical benefits to family members infected with syphilis.
• NY Times - Irwin Schatz, 83, Rare Critic of Tuskegee Study, Is Dead
  Irwin Schatz, 83, Rare Critic of Tuskegee Study, Is Dead
  By Sam Roberts, NY Times, April 18, 2015
  
• Presidential Apology - USPHS Syphilis Study at Tuskegee
  On the Tuskegee University YouTube channel, posted there with permission from the William J. Clinton Presidential Library. An excerpt from this video is in Bill Jenkins - Voices of the Tuskegee Study
• Susan Reverby - Tuskegee's Truths: Rethinking the Tuskegee Syphilis Study
  Tuskegee's Truths: Rethinking the Tuskegee Syphilis Study
  Edited by Susan M. Reverby
  University of North Carolina Press, 2000
• The Deadly Deception (NOVA)
  Among those interviewed include Vanessa Gamble (Historian of Medicine, MD Ph.D.), Allan Brandt (Historian of Medicine and Science), Herman Shaw (Study subject), Mary Hardy (Tuskegee Nurse), John Cutler (Tuskegee Study Researcher), James Jones (Historian, author of Bad Blood), Jay Katz (Professor of Law and Psychiatry), Bill Jenkins (Epidemiologist, CDC), Peter Buxton (Public Health worker, CDC), Gene Stollerman (CDC Review Panel, 1969), David Sencer (Director, CDC 1966-77), Charles Pollard (Study subject).
  •Edited by Charles Scott.
  •Camera by Robert Shepard, Brian Dowley, Bill Mills.
  •Original music composed by John Kusiak.
  •Voice over narration by Bill Mason.
  Winner of the 1993 National Association of Black Journalists Award.
  "A nearly extinct relic, The Deadly Deception was once a documentary screened in high schools throughout the US. It may be still, although its net presence is not consistent with that of an important educational film."
  http://originalpeople.org/the-deadly-deception-1993-rare-documentary-tuskegee-experiment/
• The Tuskegee Experiment Kept Killing Black People Decades After It Ended
  By Jesse Singal, The Science of Us. June 15, 2016 Summarizes a recently published National Bureau of Economic Research working paper by Marcella Alsan, a public-health researcher at Stanford, and Marianne Wanamaker, a University of Tennessee economist discussing this "unethical and deadly experiment," which they call "one of the most egregious examples of medical exploitation in U.S. history".
• The Tuskegee Timeline
  In 1932, the Public Health Service, working with the Tuskegee Institute, began a study to record the natural history of syphilis in hopes of justifying treatment programs for blacks. It was called the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.”
• z-See also Bill Jenkins
  William "Bill" Jenkins attempted to bring public attention to the Tuskegee Syphilis Study before it was halted, managed the CDC's health benefits program for study survivors, helped to secure the Presidential apology, produced a video with study survivors, and devoted his career to preventing a recurrence by educating the public health profession about the study, expanding ethnic diversity in the public health professional, and living as a champion of health equity.