Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment

The Associated Press is finishing up 2025 by remembering notable news makers who died this year. One may be familiar to longtime listeners to Alabama Public Radio. Pete Buxton died in May at the age of eighty six. He was the federal health care worker who blew the whistle on the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment.

The Associated Press is releasing a roll call report of some noteworthy figures who died in 2024. This includes people who passed away this year and had rippling, long-lasting effects in Alabama.

Peter Buxtun, the whistleblower who revealed that the U.S. government allowed hundreds of Black men in rural Alabama to go untreated for syphilis in what became known as the Tuskegee study, has died. He was 86. Buxtun was also a key interview in Alabama Public Radio’s national award-winning investigation of rural health in the State, which focused in part on the twentieth anniversary of President Bill Clinton’s apology for the study.

The U.S. government is taking steps to repair of the damage done by the Tuskegee Experiment, where Black men in Alabama were infected with syphilis and withheld treatment by federal officials. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Foundation is pledging $5 million in scholarships for descendants.

Black people historically have a lack of trust in the healthcare system because of medical experimentations, like the Tuskegee Experiment, where for 40 years, the US Public Health Service conducted a study of untreated Syphilis in Black men. Researchers didn’t collect informed consent and they didn’t offer treatment, even when it was widely available.This week, Robin Boylorn traces the history of medical racism, by rejecting stereotypes that lead to medical malpractice in order to achieve ethical healthcare outcomes for Black people.

A team of divers have been trolling the deep, cold waters of Lake Huron off Michigan's Thumb for several weeks each of the past few years searching for scattered pieces of aviation — and Black military — history. Their target is the wreckage of a World War II-era fighter plane flown by a member of the famed Tuskegee Airmen that crashed during training nearly 80 years ago near Port Huron, about 60 miles northeast of Detroit.

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Tomorrow marks 20 years since President Bill Clinton formally apologized on behalf of the U.S. government for the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment.The purpose…