It was a half-century ago that the public first learned of the extent of the Tuskegee syphilis study, despite its having gone on for decades and journal articles about it being published as early as 1926. Author Martin J. Tobin recounts the story of this study and of another U.S. Public Health Service (PHS)-led study that started in the 1940s, when people in Guatemala were intentionally infected with sexually transmitted diseases in a recent article in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. The studies were led by some of the leading researchers of their time and were plainly unethical. “The Alabama investigation was conducted in an open society, it extended over 40 years, and it resulted in numerous publications in reputable journals read all over the world,” he writes. “…senior scientists were fully aware of the nature and magnitude of the PHS irregularities and took no action. Yet when the information was communicated in the lay press, the problem was immediately obvious to the general public.”
The article raises many interesting ethical concerns that remain relevant to research today. We hope you’ll take the time to read it.
Please note: The article contains a lot of details that aren’t typically included in the brief descriptions we usually hear when these studies are discussed, and they are graphic and disturbing.