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On The Record

Blowing the Whistle on the Tuskegee Syphilis Study

By Sheilah Kast,
Melissa Gerr
Published October 25, 2017 at 10:56 AM EDT
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

In 1932 the U.S. Public Health Service enlisted African-American men in Macon County, Alabama in a syphilis study. The men weren’t asked for informed consent -- and were told they would get treatment. They didn’t, even after penicillin was shown to cure syphilis.

We meet Peter Buxtun, a public health employee who discovered in the 1960s what was happening and bioethicist Nancy Kass, from Johns Hopkins’ Berman Institute, explains how Buxtun’s whistleblower helped shape the rules and regulations surrounding research today.

Peter Buxtun will be speaking at UMBC tomorrow at 4 pm in Lecture Hall 1 in the Biological Sciences Building.

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Sheilah Kast
Sheilah Kast is the host of On The Record, Monday-Friday, 9:30-10:00 am.
See stories by Sheilah Kast
Melissa Gerr
Melissa Gerr is a Senior Producer for On the Record. She started in public media at Twin Cities Public Television in St. Paul, Minn., where she is from, and then worked as a field producer for Oregon Public Broadcasting in Portland. She made the jump to audio-lover in Baltimore as a digital media editor at Mid-Atlantic Media and Laureate Education, Inc. and as a field producer for "Out of the Blocks." Her beat is typically the off-beat with an emphasis on science, culture and things that make you say, 'Wait, what?'
See stories by Melissa Gerr