Following Doctor's Orders:

It takes little imagination to ascribe racist attitudes to the White Government Officials who ran the experient, but what can one make of the numberous African Americans who collaborated with them?

Ther experiments name comes from the Tuskegee Institute, the Black University founded by Booker T. Washington. It's affiliated hospital lent the PHS it's medical facilities for the study, and other predominately black institutions as well as local black doctors also partiscipated.

A black nurse name Eunice Rivers, was central fiqure in the experiment for most of it's 40 years. The promise of recognition by a presigious government agency may have obscuredthe troubling aspects of the study for some.

A Tuskegee doctor, for example, praise "the educational advantages offered our interns and nurses as well as added standing it will give the hospital. "Nurse Rivers" explained her role a one of passive obedience, "we were taught that we never diagnosed, we never prescribe, we followed the doctor's instructions"!

It is clear that the men in the experiment trusted her and that she sincerely cared about their well being, but her unquestioning submission to authority eclipsed her moral judgement. Even after, she genuinely felt nothing ethical had been amiss.

One of the most chilling aspects of the experiment was how zealously the PHS kept these men from receivingtreatment. When several nationwide compaigns to eradicate vereral disease came to Macon County, the men were prevented from participating.

Even when penicillin was discovered in the 1940s, the first real cure for shphilis, the Tuskegee men were diliberately denied the mediction. During World War II, 250 of the men registered for the draft and were consequently ordered to get treatment for syphilis, only to have PHS to exempt them.

Please at their success, the PHS representative annouced, So far we are keeping the known positive patients from getting the treatment. "The experiment continued in spite of the Henderson Act (1943) a Public Health Law requiring testing and treatment for Vereral disease and in spite of the World Health Organization's Declaration of Helsinki (1964), which specified that "Informed Consent" was needed for experiment inolving human beings...