Tuskegee’s Truths: Rethinking the Tuskegee Syphilis Study

Abstract

Tuskegee's Truths: Rethinking the Tuskegee Syphilis Edited by Susan M. Reverby (Chapel Hill, NC, and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2000) (637 pages; $69.95 cloth; $27.50 paper). Tuskegee 's Truths: Rethinking the Tuskegee Syphilis is an excellent edited collection that explores the notorious forty-year United States Public Health Service study of untreated syphilis in poor, African-American men. Editor Susan M. Reverby has crafted a commendable volume that consists of historical documents, artistic considerations, and scholarly analyses related to the experiment. Reverby's finest and most praiseworthy decision was to include opinions and arguments that differed fundamentally from her own. Tuskegee's Truths should not be a comfortable read-her inclusion of disturbing and discomforting information matches the subject under investigation. Tuskegee's Truths begins with Reverby's introduction and a foreword by James Jones, whose book, Bad Blood, formed the historiographie foundation for all subsequent examinations of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Reverby then divides the collection into sections. first section presents a historical overview of the study. Alan Brandt's excellent essay, Racism and Research: case of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, and Susan Bell's timeline of the project provide key factual information. Brandt's contribution also investigates themes such as racism and the parameters of scientific research, which are explored in more detail throughout the remainder of the book. Parts 2, 3, and 8 present primary sources such as correspondence between public health officials, scientific and medical journal articles derived from the study, interviews with survivors, and testimony from individuals who successfully ended the study and won treatment and compensation for the victims and their families. Consideration of the type of care the men received during the experiment is the focus of section 4. Parts 5 and 9 are dedicated to artistic, historical, philosophical, and literary reflections on the study. John C. Fletcher's A case in Historical Relativism: Tuskegee (Public Health Service) Syphilis Study is a thought-provoking essay that deserves special mention. Fletcher unflinchingly holds the medical researchers responsible for specific moral wrongs and harms including adding to risks of death and ill health. He eloquently explains why the Tuskegee Syphilis should be renamed the Public Health (PHS) of Partially Treated Syphilis in Macon County, Alabama: The PHS was morally responsible for the study in its entirety. …

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