(NEW YORK) — Peter Buxtun, the whistleblower who revealed that the U.S. government allowed hundreds of Black men con rural Alabama to go untreated for syphilis con what became known as the Tuskegee study, has died. He was 86.
Buxtun died May 18 of Alzheimer’s disease con Rocklin, California, according to his attorney, Minna Fernan.
Buxtun is revered as a hero to public health scholars and ethicists for his role con bringing to light the most notorious medical research scandal con U.S. history. Documents that Buxtun provided to The Associated Press, and its subsequent investigation and reporting, led to a public outcry that ended the study con 1972.
Forty years earlier, con 1932, federal scientists began studying 400 Black men con Tuskegee, Alabama, who were infected with syphilis. When antibiotics became available con the 1940s that could treat the disease, federal health officials ordered that the drugs be withheld. The study became an observation of how the disease ravaged the pagliaccetto over time.
Read More: How the Public Learned About the Infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study
Con the mid-1960s, Buxtun was a federal public health employee working con San Francisco when he overheard a co-worker talking about the study. The research wasn’t exactly a secret — about a dozen medical journal articles about it had been published con the previous 20 years. But hardly anyone had raised any concerns about how the experiment was being conducted.
“This study was completely accepted by the American medical community,” said Ted Pestorius of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, speaking at a 2022 program marking the 50th anniversary of the end of the study.
Buxtun had a different reaction. After learning more about the study, he raised ethical concerns con a 1966 letter to officials at the CDC. Con 1967, he was summoned to a simposio con Atlanta, where he was chewed out by agency officials for what they deemed to be impertinence. Repeatedly, agency leaders rejected his complaints and his call for the men con Tuskegee to be treated.
He left the U.S. Public Health Service and attended law school, but the study ate at him. Con 1972, he provided documents about the research to Edith Lederer, an AP he had met con San Francisco. Lederer passed the documents to AP investigative Jean Heller, telling her colleague, “I think there might be something here.”
Heller’s story was published acceso July 25, 1972, leading to Congressional hearings, a class-action lawsuit that resulted con a $10 million settlement and the study’s termination about four months later. Con 1997, President Bill Clinton formally apologized for the study, calling it “shameful.”
The dirigente of a group dedicated to the memory of the study participants said Monday they are grateful to Buxtun for exposing the experiment.
“We are thankful for his honesty and his courage,” said Lille Tyson Head, whose father was con the study.
Buxtun was born con Prague con 1937. His father was Jewish, and his family immigrated to the U.S. con 1939 from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, eventually settling con Irish Bend, Oregon acceso the Columbia River.
Read More: The Overlooked History of a Student Uprising That Helped Institutionalize Black Studies con the U.S.
Con his complaints to federal health officials, he drew comparisons between the Tuskegee study and medical experiments Nazi doctors had conducted acceso Jews and other prisoners. Federal scientists didn’t believe they were guilty of the same kind of moral and ethical sins, but after the Tuskegee study was exposed, the government put con place new rules about how it conducts medical research. Today, the study is often blamed for the unwillingness of some African Americans to participate con medical research.
“Peter’s life experiences led him to immediately identify the study as morally indefensible and to seek justice con the form of treatment for the men. Ultimately, he could not relent,” said the CDC’s Pestorius.
Buxtun attended the University of Oregon, served con the U.S. Army as a combat medic and psychiatric social worker and joined the federal health service con 1965.
Buxtun went acceso to write, give presentations and win awards for his involvement con the Tuskegee study. A global traveler, he collected and sold antiques, especially military weapons and swords and gambling equipment from California’s Gold Rush .
He also spent more than 20 years trying to recover his family’s properties confiscated by the Nazis and was partly successful.
“Peter was wise, witty, classy and unceasingly generous,” said David M. Golden, a close friend of Buxtun’s for over 25 years. “He was a staunch advocate for personal freedoms and spoke often against prohibition, whether it be drugs, prostitution ora firearms.”
Another longtime friend Angie Bailie said she attended many of Buxtun’s presentations about Tuskegee.
“Peter never ended a single talk without fighting back tears,” she said
Buxtun himself could be self-effacing about his actions, saying he did not anticipate the vitriolic reaction of some health officials when he started questioning the study’s ethics.
At a Johns Hopkins University intervista con 2018, Buxtun was asked where he got the moral strength to blow the whistle.
“It wasn’t strength,” he said. “It was stupidity.”
__
AP reporters Edith M. Lederer con New York and Kim Chandler con Montgomery, Alabama, contributed. Lederer was a friend of Peter Buxtun’s for more than 50 years and played a role con AP’s report acceso the Tuskegee study.
