NOVA: THE DEADLY DECEPTION (TV)

Summary

One in this series of science documentaries. This edition examines the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, in which 400 black men in Alabama were deceptively experimented upon over the course of several decades. Several elderly men who were involved in the real-life case attend a production of "Miss Evers' Boys," a play by David Feldshuh inspired by the story. George Strait journeys to Alabama to research the case, and Dr. Vanessa Gamble explains that the men were mostly poor sharecroppers, the descendants of slaves, and had little access to healthcare. Historian Allan Brandt describes the heightened fear of syphilis in the 1920s and '30s and how it was treated, somewhat effectively, with various poisons. In 1930, a pilot treatment project in Alabama discovered that 35% of the black residents were infected, but the ongoing Depression and high cost of the medicines proved insurmountable and the scientists soon left. Researcher Taliaferro Clark then suggested that study would be cheaper than treatment and that the Alabama residents would make the perfect subjects, given their poverty and "rather low intelligence." Wondering if blacks and whites were biologically dissimilar and would be differently affected by the disease, he appealed to the Tuskegee Institute for help and, assuming that his intentions were legitimate, they agreed in autumn 1932 to allow their hospital and labs to be used.

There were no regulations for medical test subjects at the time, and "undesirables" such as prisoners were often used as guinea pigs. As Herman Shaw and Charles Pollard explain, the Alabama men were promised free medicine to cure their "bad blood," the euphemistic term for various diseases. However, they were not actually treated at all but instead studied, undergoing painful procedures including spinal taps in order to give the scientists information about syphilis, particularly its symptomless latency period, which can last for years. They all received letters falsely promising "very special treatment," and most did not question the doctors' authority. Program director Raymond Vonderlehr proposed extending the test far beyond the original six months, and Nurse Eunice Rivers was hired as a liaison between the men and the scientists, summoning them for their annual round-ups at which they were studied and given placebos. Some of the men were given small "life insurance" bribes to fund their eventual burials, though they were first studied in autopsy. Remarkably, the study and its findings were published in major journals, and yet no one spoke up about its clear immorality. Vonderlehr mounted a national syphilis treatment program in the late '30s but deliberately excluded the Tuskegee men, and Shaw recalls being tossed out of a doctor's office for "abrogating the study."

The Tuskegee men were also exempted from the WWII draft, and although a breakthrough came when penicillin was found to be highly effective in treating various diseases, this too was denied to the test subjects. A legal code requiring patients' informed consent was established after the Nuremberg trials of 1947 revealed the Nazis' excessive human experiments, though John Heller, who replaced Vonderlehr, protested that it did not apply to the Tuskegee men, arguing that the Nazis' crimes were not comparable. Attorney Fred Gray comments on the irony of the rise of the civil rights movement right alongside such a widely-ignored example of racism, and the Central for Disease Control took over the experiments by the mid-'60s. Epidemiologist Bill Jenkins explains how he attempted to blow the whistle by sending the results to the media, but admits that he was naïve in assuming that it would have an impact. In San Francisco, Peter Buxton spoke out when he heard of a doctor being punished for treating an infected man, and was then severely "lambasted" by Dr. John Cutler for compromising the experiment at a conference in Atlanta. An all-white panel of CDC doctors decided that the experiments should continue, feeling that it was too late to help the men with medicine anyway, though Gene Stollerman objected to the "paternalistic" decision to keep the subjects in the dark.

Buxton sent his findings to the Associated Press in 1972, and the experiment was finally halted in October. Pollard met with Gray and Gray filed suit on behalf of the men, though the eventual settlement awarded the men less than $38,000 each. Brandt points out that the experiments were conducted sloppily as well as immorally and that the "negative results" only proved established data and nothing new, though Cutler continues to defend the study. Gamble explains the long-term effects of the deception on blacks' mistrust of white doctors, and Professor Jay Katz pursues law cases of uninformed patient consent. Shaw, who still lives in Alabama, celebrates his ninetieth birthday, but acknowledges that many of the other men in the study were less lucky than he and suffered the effects, including premature death, of their untreated illness.

Details

• NETWORK: PBS WGBH Boston, MA
• DATE: January 26, 1993 8:00 PM
• RUNNING TIME: 1:00:00
• COLOR/B&W: Color
• CATALOG ID: B:44674
• GENRE: Science/Nature
• SUBJECT HEADING: Science/Nature; Science - Experiments; Race discrimination
• SERIES RUN: PBS - TV series, 1974-
• COMMERCIALS:
  • TV - Promos - "Nova" upcoming episode

CREDITS

• Paula S. Apsell … Executive Producer
• Beth Hoppe … Coordinating Producer
• Denisce DiIanni … Producer, Director, Writer
• Susan Kopman … Associate Producer
• John Kusiak … Music by
• Mason Daring … Theme Music by
• Martin Brody … Theme Music by
• Bill Mason … Narrator
• George Strait … Interviewee
• Vanessa Gamble … Interviewee
• Allan Brandt … Interviewee
• Herman Shaw … Interviewee
• Charles Pollard … Interviewee
• John Charles Cutler … Interviewee
• Jay Katz … Interviewee
• Fred Gray … Interviewee
• Bill Jenkins … Interviewee
• Peter Buxton … Interviewee
• Gene Stollerman … Interviewee
• David Feldshuh
• Taliaferro Clark
• Raymond Vonderlehr
• Eunice Rivers
• John Heller