Back to Annual Meeting

Back to Annual Meeting

APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Bill Jenkins, MS, PhD, MPH, Research Center on Health Disparities, Morehouse College, 830 Westview Drive, Atlanta, GA 30314, 404-681-2800 x2466, bjenkins@morehouse.edu

Perhaps the most infamous public health research program in American history is the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.” Yet, most Americans understand very little about what happened and most public health scientists and practitioners avoid seeking to understand its implications for current issues in Public Health. In the face of questions regarding the ethics of a number of public initiatives, official representatives and managers response is “this is not another Tuskegee Study” without having the slightest clue about what happened in Tuskegee and why.

This presentation provides a few highlights about the Tuskegee Study, seeking to answer the following questions: Why did federal scientists suggest such a project? Why did Tuskegee Institute and the physicians of Macon County support this project? Why did the denial of treatment go on for so long? Lastly, why was there so much resistance to ending the study and what safe guards were put in place as a result of what happened in Tuskegee?

So, what are the forces that assure us that facets of the Tuskegee Study may well happen again? These forces include issues such as racism, which remains as the basic force in the American society in health and in prevention research; classism, which still impacts the delivery of services in America; and culture, which may hamper the effective utilization of healthcare and participation in medical research. Efforts which seek to achieve “good” can often be misdirected to achieve an unethical outcome.

Learning Objectives: