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Peter Buxtun, whistleblower who exposed Tuskegee syphilis study, has died

Buxtun, who had Alzheimer’s, revered for role in bringing to light one of worst medical research scandals in US history

Peter Buxtun, the whistleblower who revealed that the US government allowed hundreds of Black men in rural Alabama to go untreated for syphilis in what became known as the Tuskegee study, has died. 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 did not 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.

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