Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2008 Nov;19(4):1168-80.
doi: 10.1353/hpu.0.0067.

The legacy of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study: assessing its impact on willingness to participate in biomedical studies

Ralph V Katz  1 , B Lee Green, Nancy R Kressin, S Stephen Kegeles, Min Qi Wang, Sherman A James, Stefanie L Russell, Cristina Claudio, Jan M McCallum
Affiliations

The legacy of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study: assessing its impact on willingness to participate in biomedical studies

Ralph V Katz et al. J Health Care Poor Underserved. 2008 Nov.

Abstract

The phrase, 'legacy of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study', is sometimes used to denote the belief that Blacks are more reluctant than Whites to participate in biomedical research studies because of the infamous study of syphilis in men run by the U.S. Public Health Service from 1932-72. This paper is the first to attempt to assess directly the accuracy of this belief within a multi-city, multi-racial, large-scale, detailed random survey. We administered the Tuskegee Legacy Project (TLP) Questionnaire to 826 Blacks and non-Hispanic White adults in three U.S. cities. While Blacks had higher levels of general awareness of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, there was no association between either awareness or detailed knowledge of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and willingness to participate in biomedical research, either for Blacks or Whites observed in our survey. While this study refutes the notion that there is a direct connection between detailed knowledge of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and willingness to participate in biomedical research, it does not assess the broader question of whether and how historical events influence people's willingness to participate in research. Future studies should explore this.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The percentage of respondents who answered `true' to the 7 items on the Tuskegee Syphilis Study (TSS) Facts & Myth Quiz by race within city among those who had heard of the TSS (n=565). Note: Capital letters indicate a TRUE statement. *Statistically significant between Blacks vs. Whites within city at p<,.05.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Mean scores* on TSS Facts & Myths Quiz by race within city for the 565 respondents who had heard of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Note: none of the Black vs. Whites contrasts for either quiz score within city are statistically significant. *(Mean # of correct answers).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Jones JH. Bad blood: the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. Free Press; New York: 1993. 1981.
    1. Gamble VN, Fletcher JC, Chapter X. Tuskegee Syphilis Study Legacy Committee Report of 1996. In: Reverby SM, editor. Tuskegee's truths: rethinking the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. University of North Carolina Press; Chapel Hill and London: 2000.
    1. Katz RV, Kegeles SS, Green BL, et al. The Tuskegee Legacy Project: history, preliminary scientific findings, and unanticipated societal benefits. Dent Clin North Am. 2003 Jan;47(1):1–19. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Hunninghake DB, Darby CA, Probstfield JL. Recruitment experience in clinical trials: literature summary and annotated bibliography. Control Clin Trials. 1987 Dec;8(4 Suppl):6S–30S. - PubMed
    1. Swanson MS, Ward AJ. Recruiting minorities into clinical trials: toward a participantfriendly system. J Natl Cancer Inst. 1995 Dec 6;87(23):1747–59. - PubMed