title: The legacy of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study: assessing its impact on willingness to participate in biomedical studies.
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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology and Health Promotion, College of Dentistry, New York University, 250 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10003, USA. ralph.katz@nyu.edu
authors.forename: Ralph V
authors.initials: RV
authors.lastname: Katz
authors.forename: B Lee
authors.initials: BL
authors.lastname: Green
authors.forename: Nancy R
authors.initials: NR
authors.lastname: Kressin
authors.forename: S Stephen
authors.initials: SS
authors.lastname: Kegeles
authors.forename: Min Qi
authors.initials: MQ
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Sherman A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: James
authors.forename: Stefanie L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Russell
authors.forename: Cristina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Claudio
authors.forename: Jan M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: McCallum
mesh_terms: D001741:Black or African American; D001364:Awareness; D035843:Biomedical Research / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D035842:Research Subjects / Q000523:psychology*; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013587:Syphilis; D014481:United States; D014492:United States Public Health Service; D044465:White People