Tuskegee Legacy Discourages Trial Participation by Blacks

Gever, John. (2008) Tuskegee Legacy Discourages Trial Participation by Blacks.

Abstract

African Americans are still suspicious of the clinical research establishment, some 35 years after details of the infamous Tuskegee study of untreated syphilis were revealed, researchers here said. More than twice as many blacks as white believe physicians secretly experiment on patients, reported Neil R. Powe, M.D., M.P.H., and colleagues at Johns Hopkins in the January issue of Medicine. The researchers said this was the first study to quantify different perceptions of risk associated with clinical trials by race. They wanted to explore the difficulty noted by many earlier researchers in enrolling African-American participants in clinical trials.