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MBL Falmouth Forum Series 2010-2011
Lecture in Bioethics - Sponsored by Drs. Gerald and Ruth Fischbach
July 20, 2011 - Lillie Auditorium, 7:30 PM
Lecture is free and open to the public.
“Escaping Melodramas: Reflections on the U.S. Public Health Service Unethical Research Studies in Tuskegee and Guatemala”
Susan Reverby, Wellesley College
The U.S. government has now apologized for two different medical research studies: the “Tuskegee” study of “Untreated Syphilis in the Male Negro (1932-72)” and the “STD Inoculation Studies in Guatemala (1946-48).” Dr. Reverby will be discussing how these studies became known, why the government apologized, and the limits in the ways in which the stories of both of these studies have come to be known. Reverby was involved in the group that lobbied for the Tuskegee apology in 1997 and it was her uncovering of the Guatemala studies (heretofore unknown) that led to the apology this past October.
Susan M. Reverby is the Marion Butler McLean Professor in the History of Ideas and Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Wellesley College. She is an historian of American medicine, women, health care and nursing.
Her most recent book, the winner of three book prizes, is Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and its Legacy (2009). Her article “’Normal Exposure’ and Inoculation Syphilis: A PHS Tuskegee Doctor in Guatemala” led to President Obama’s apology to Guatemala for the study and an on-going investigation by the President’s Commission on Bioethical Issues.
Admission to this MBL Falmouth Forum presentation is free and open to the public. For more information, contact the MBL Communications Office at: (508) 289-7423 or
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