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The Legacy of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study: Assessing its Impact on Willingness to Participate in Biomedical Studies
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

The Legacy of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study: Assessing its Impact on Willingness to Participate in Biomedical Studies

Ralph Katz, B Green, Nancy Kressin, S Kegeles, Min Wang, Sherman James, Stefanie Russell, Cristina Claudio and Jan McCallum
Journal of health care for the poor and underserved, v 19(4), pp 1168-1180
01 Nov 2008
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/hpu.0.0067
PMID: 19029744
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
url
https://europepmc.org/articles/pmc2702151?pdf=renderView
Accepted (AM)Open Access (License Unspecified),  Open

Abstract

Biomedical research Cities Community Data collection Health services Multivariate analysis Studies White people African Americans Gender Differences
There is widespread belief that the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) Syphilis Study at Tuskegee (1932-72) has had a negative effect on African-Americans' willingness to participate as research subjects in biomedical studies.1-5 That study, long-recognized as unethical, committed abuses against 399 African-American sharecroppers in Macon Country, Alabama who were the subjects of a 40-year USPHS study of the effects of untreated syphilis in Black men.6,7 While a considerable amount has been written about the long-lasting effects of the USPHS Syphilis Study at Tuskegee on the Black community, most of this work has been from the perspective of history,8-15 ethics,8-17 access to health care,11,14-21 and law.15,20 Given the federal government's 1994 directive for researchers to obtain study samples with diversity in race and gender,22 surprisingly little research has directly examined whether any differential participation of Blacks or other minorities in biomedical studies compared with Whites could be attributed to the USPHS Syphilis Study at Tuskegee,23-30 and only three of these studies used quantitative methods.28-30 A 2006 literature review pointed out the research design limitations of these three published quantitative studies on this specific topic31 (they had low response rates,30 were limited in scope to a single city,28-30 or used study questionnaires containing only a limited set of variables28-30).

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Health Policy & Services
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