that were painful and that involved medical complications; invasion of privacy for the subjects and their families (which continued after death with deception to obtain autopsy results); and so on. There was even a group of 200 men who were told they had syphilis when they did not in order to provide data on comparable psychological stress for comparisons with the experimental group.
The recent debate over the health care issue demonstrated one thing clearly--the American people may have doubts about how much they are charged for their medical care, and they may believe that medical care is more easily acquired by the rich than the poor, but in general they trust the medical profession to provide adequate care and to treat disease whenever and wherever it is found. The Tuskegee Study undercuts this faith in the medial establishment, at least for the black segment of the population. Indeed, many black people have long claimed that they are treated differently, and more callously, by many institutions in American life, including the medical establishment. This is always denied, and yet the Tuskegee Study demonstrates that in this case at least it was a fact.
Jones sets out to tell this story and accomplishes that task quite well. He wisely avoids being overly emotional or judgmental about what he reveals, and indeed it is not necessary that he make overt judgments. The facts speak volumes and did so from the time the case was under investigation in 1972. At every stage of the development of this program, the accepted canons of medical ethics of the time were simply ignored, and Jones does not have to point this out--the sequence of events shows it to be true. Indeed, it is evident from the first page of this book that something was very wrong with the entire project from the first and that the Public Health Service (PHS) did not follow its own guidelines and procedures:
Under examination by the press the PHS was not a...