Word: phs
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...unthinkable for a physician to with hold a proven remedy for a disease from his patients. But in 1972, the U.S. Pub lic Health Service reluctantly admitted that it had done just that. In an effort to study the effects of syphilis on the human body, the PHS, in a Macon County, Ala., study, allowed 425 poor, un educated black men who had the dis ease, and who were recruited through local clinics, to go untreated. The dis closure of the 40-year study stirred an immediate outcry (TIME, Aug. 7, 1972) and led to a $1.8 billion suit against...
...time the test began, treatment for syphilis was uncertain at best, and involved a lifelong series of risky injections of such toxic substances as bismuth, arsenic and mercury. But in the years following World War II, the PHS's test became a matter of medical morality. Penicillin had been found to be almost totally effective against syphilis, and by war's end it had become generally available. But the PHS did not use the drug on those participating in the study unless the patients asked...
Such a failure seems almost beyond belief, or human compassion. Recent reviews of 125 cases by the PHS'S Center for Disease Control in Atlanta found that half had syphilitic heart valve damage. Twenty-eight had died of cardiovascular or central nervous system problems that were complications of syphilis...
...findings on the effects of untreated syphilis have been reported periodically in medical journals for years. Last week's shock came when an alert A.P. correspondent noticed and reported that the lack of treatment was intentional. Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin, a member of the subcommittee that oversees PHS's budgets, called the study "a moral and ethical nightmare." Dr. Merlin K. DuVal Jr., Assistant Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare for Health and Scientific Affairs, expressed dismay and launched an investigation...
...treating them for whatever other diseases or physical problems they might have, but it can do little for their syphilis. The average age of the survivors is 74, and the massive penicillin therapy necessary to arrest their long-ignored affliction could do more harm than good. For them, the PHS reversal has come too late...