ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, April 9, 1997 TAG: 9704090045
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
The government will formally apologize to the black men in Tuskegee, Ala., whose syphilis went untreated for years as part of a federal study, the White House said Tuesday.
President Clinton will issue the apology soon, said White House spokeswoman Mary Ellen Glynn.
The decision was announced as four survivors of the experiments came forward in Alabama to demand an apology. The White House did not say whether that was a factor.
``The president feels it's a blight on our record and it should be rectified,'' Glynn said.
The government has moved toward an apology for the Tuskegee experiment in recent weeks, spurred in part by Clinton's 1995 apology to victims of secret radiation experiments during the Cold War.
In the Tuskegee experiment, the U.S. Public Health Service withheld treatment from 399 men between 1932 and 1972 to study how syphilis spread and how it killed.
The men were not told they had the disease and were not given penicillin, the standard treatment since 1947. The study, made public in a 1972 article by The Associated Press, forced changes in government research practices, but it also generated a mistrust of public health efforts among black Americans that lingers to this day.
U.S. officials never apologized for the grim research, which was the subject of a stage production and a recent HBO film, ``Miss Evers' Boys.'' A class-action lawsuit was settled out of court, and the government has paid roughly $10 million to victims and their heirs since 1973.
``I lived through it, and I thank the Lord for it,'' said Herman Shaw, 94, a farmer who joined the study in 1932 thinking it would give him access to up-to-date health care.
Shaw said an apology would be a great consolation. He also would like a monument in honor of the participants ``so our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren could see what we went through.''
There are eight surviving participants - the youngest is 87 years old - and four of them met Tuesday at a church in Notasulga, Ala., that once served as an intake station for the study.
The survivors are anxious to receive an apology and a meeting with Clinton, said their attorney, Fred Gray.
``In 1932, these men were taken advantage of by being used as human guinea pigs. Their lives were placed in jeopardy ... without their knowledge or consent,'' Gray said. ``They are now requesting that an appropriate apology be made.''
Gray spoke before the White House announced its decision.
White House aides were working Tuesday on a suitable way to issue the apology and on whether there should be further compensation, said an official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
LENGTH: Medium: 60 linesby CNB