U.S. Closer To Apologizing For Syphilis Study Infamous Tuskegee Study Used 399 Black Men As Guinea Pigs

A generation after it was learned that black men were used as guinea pigs for the study of syphilis in the infamous Tuskegee experiment, the government may be moving closer to a formal apology.

President Clinton’s apology in 1995 to the victims of secret Cold War-era radiation experiments may have set the pattern, Dr. David Satcher, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in an interview Thursday.

“That’s the kind of thing we would anticipate, but we don’t know at this point what would happen,” he said.

The Tuskegee experiment was conducted in Tuskegee, Ala., between 1932 and 1972. The government withheld treatment from 399 men with syphilis so they could study how it spreads and kills. The men weren’t told they had the disease. Nor were they given penicillin after it became the standard treatment in 1947.

To the black community, it was a betrayal that caused a distrust of public health officials that lingers to this day.

Dr. Louis W. Sullivan, former U.S. health secretary and now president of Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, said it would take a monumental effort for the government to regain the trust of black people.

“This is not going to be easy and it’s not going to happen overnight,” Sullivan said. “Twenty years later, we are still wrestling with the damage that’s been done. Science needs to be open.”

Since 1973, the government has paid $10 million to a total of 6,000 victims of the Tuskegee experiment and their heirs in an out-of-court settlement of a class-action lawsuit.

“It’s unfortunate that the government has waited over 20 years after the litigation and over 60 years since it started to apologize,” said Fred Gray, the Tuskegee attorney who brought the lawsuit.

“Miss Evers’ Boys,” an HBO fictional movie that premieres on Saturday, deals with the study. Satcher, whose agency took control of the Tuskegee study in 1957 from the U.S. Public Health Service, said the movie will bring pressure on the government to apologize.