Doctors Invovled
Dr. Taliaferro Clark is associated with the start of the experiment. He was a Public Health Service officer who guaranteed that the government was giving their full support for this study. He finished the Rosenwald project and noticed that the rate of syphilis was rising so along with Dr. Vonderlehr, he began the study. |
Dr. Raymond H. Vonderlehr was the on-site director of the study and assisted Dr. Clark in conducting the research; he also helped conduct physical exams. He supported giving the men partial treatment because that would make more men participate in the experiment. Vonderlehr came up with policies which gained “consent” of the African men for the spinal taps. He retired in 1943. |
Dr. John R. Heller was Dr. Vonderlehr's assistant at the Tuskegee Study. Heller was in charge of making sure no one found out about penicillin and he was alive when the study was brought to the media's attention in 1972. He defended the study and made the people believe that they were doing nothing wrong. |
Nurse Eunice Rivers was an African American nurse who was training at Tuskegee University. She moved from the John Andrew Hospital to work with Dr. Clark and Dr. Vonderlehr when the study began. She gradually became the chief continuity person and was around for all forty years of the experiment. During the Great Depression, Africans who could not afford healthcare joined Miss Rivers' Lodge where they would obtain free physical exams at Tuskegee University along with hot meals and rides to and from the clinic
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Dr. Eugene Dibble was head of the John Andrew Hospital. He wrote to the president of the institute and persuaded him to hold the experiment on their campus because it would be a good opportunity to train the students and interns. Fred Grey believes Dr. Dibble is not guilty for conducting the experiment because he himself is just as much as a victim as the other men. |