Two top Black physicians likely knew of the Tuskegee syphilis study in progress in the 1960’s but did not object, asserts Dr. Leslie Norins, former VD lab director at CDC

Two top Black physicians, Dr. Vernal Cave and Dr. Henry Foster, both now deceased, likely knew by the 1960’s and perhaps even earlier about the in-progress federal Tuskegee, Alabama study of untreated syphilis in Black males but did not object at the time, says Leslie Norins, MD, PhD, FIDSA. 

Now 86, his belief is based on his recollections and circumstantial evidence from 60 years ago, when he was director of CDC’s Venereal Disease Research Laboratory. It is posted on OpEdist.com.

He explains that, during the years spotlighted, Dr. Cave directed the New York City venereal disease control program. He was credentialed as a dermatologist, but most people are not aware that those specialists, at that time, were also required to be experts on syphilis. They thus religiously read the medical journals reporting interim findings of the Tuskegee study.

The New York Times obituary of Dr, Cave reported he had also been the medical officer for the famed Tuskegee airmen, the Black pilots group whose home base was Tuskegee—another way he could have learned of the study.

Nineteen years after Dr. Norins had left the CDC, Dr. Henry Foster, a prominent ob-gyn specialist, was nominated by Bill Clinton to be surgeon general.  Men claiming to be from the White House phoned Dr. Norins to ask if Dr. Foster had been present at a 1969 small meeting about the study, in Tuskegee—which Dr. Norins had attended.  But he could not recall the names or faces of the locals.

In reading, Dr. Norins found that Dr. Foster had been chief of Ob-Gyn for eight years at the major hospital in Tuskegee.  He would have known the threat of syphilis to any pregnant woman required checking. Thus, he reasons, Dr. Foster would likely have become aware of the federal syphilis study and its subjects in the environs of Tuskegee.

Google’s BARD AI program adds that two additional Black physicians aided the Tuskegee Study at its inception in 1932.

Dr. Norins says he wants to add his recollections and suppositions in hopes they may provide further ethical and historical perspective on the Tuskegee study.