NEW YORK — Peter Buxtun, the whistleblower who revealed that the U.S. government allowed hundreds of Black men in rural Alabama to go untreated for syphilis in what became known as the Tuskegee study, has died. He was 86.
Buxtun died May 18 of Alzheimer’s disease in Rocklin, California, according to his attorney, Minna Fernan.
Buxtun is revered as a hero to public health scholars and ethicists for his role in bringing to light the most notorious medical research scandal in 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 in 1972.
Forty years earlier, in 1932, federal scientists began studying 400 Black men in Tuskegee, Alabama, who were infected with syphilis. When antibiotics became available in 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 body over time.
In the mid-1960s, Buxtun was a federal public health employee working in 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 in 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 in a 1966 letter to officials at the CDC. In 1967, he was summoned to a meeting in 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 in Tuskegee to be treated.
He left the U.S. Public Health Service and attended law school, but the study ate at him. In 1972, he provided documents about the research to Edith Lederer, an AP reporter he had met in San Francisco. Lederer passed the documents to AP investigative reporter Jean Heller, telling her colleague, “I think there might be something here.”
Heller’s story was published on July 25, 1972, leading to Congressional hearings, a class-action lawsuit that resulted in a $10 million settlement and the study’s termination about four months later. In 1997, President Bill Clinton formally apologized for the study, calling it “shameful.”
The leader 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 in the study.
Buxtun was born in Prague in 1937. His father was Jewish, and his family immigrated to the U.S. in 1939 from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, eventually settling in Irish Bend, Oregon on the Columbia River.
In his complaints to federal health officials, he drew comparisons between the Tuskegee study and medical experiments Nazi doctors had conducted on 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 in place new rules about how it conducts medical research. Today, the study is often blamed for the unwillingness of some African Americans to participate in medical research.
“Peter’s life experiences led him to immediately identify the study as morally indefensible and to seek justice in the form of treatment for the men. Ultimately, he could not relent,” said the CDC’s Pestorius.
Buxtun attended the University of Oregon, served in the U.S. Army as a combat medic and psychiatric social worker and joined the federal health service in 1965.
Buxtun went on to write, give presentations and win awards for his involvement in the Tuskegee study. A global traveler, he collected and sold antiques, especially military weapons and swords and gambling equipment from California’s Gold Rush era.
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 or 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 forum in 2018, Buxtun was asked where he got the moral strength to blow the whistle.
“It wasn’t strength,” he said. “It was stupidity.”
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AP reporters Edith M. Lederer in New York and Kim Chandler in Montgomery, Alabama, contributed. Lederer was a friend of Peter Buxtun’s for more than 50 years and played a role in AP’s report on the Tuskegee study.
Peter Buxtun, the whistleblower who exposed the unethical Tuskegee syphilis study, has passed away at the age of 86. Buxtun’s courageous actions led to the end of one of the most infamous cases of medical malpractice in American history.
The Tuskegee syphilis study was a research project conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service from 1932 to 1972. The study involved 600 African American men, 399 of whom had syphilis and 201 who did not. The men were told they were receiving free medical care, but in reality, they were not being treated for their illness. The researchers wanted to study the natural progression of syphilis in untreated individuals, even though effective treatment was available.
Buxtun, who was a young public health service employee at the time, became aware of the study in the early 1960s. He was troubled by the unethical nature of the research and tried to bring attention to it within the organization. However, his concerns were dismissed, and the study continued for several more years.
In 1972, Buxtun decided to take matters into his own hands and leaked information about the study to a reporter at the Associated Press. The story was published, sparking outrage and leading to the immediate termination of the study. The public outcry eventually led to changes in research ethics and regulations, including the establishment of Institutional Review Boards to oversee human subjects research.
Buxtun’s actions were instrumental in exposing the mistreatment of the participants in the Tuskegee syphilis study and bringing about accountability for those responsible. He faced backlash and criticism for his whistleblowing, but he remained steadfast in his commitment to ethical research practices.
In the years following the revelation of the study, Buxtun continued to advocate for ethical research practices and transparency in medical research. He became a symbol of integrity and courage in the face of injustice.
Peter Buxtun’s passing is a reminder of the importance of speaking out against wrongdoing, even when it may be difficult or unpopular. His legacy will live on as a beacon of hope for those who strive to uphold ethical standards in all areas of life.
