Clinton Tells Tuskegee Survivors : ‘I Am Sorry’

In a bid to promote racial healing and acknowledge a wrong that lasted for decades, President Clinton apologized Friday to a group of black men who were used in a government experiment to monitor the ravages of syphilis rather than treat it.

“They were betrayed,” the president said during an emotional White House ceremony that was attended by five of the eight survivors. “Their lives were trampled upon.”

“What was done cannot be undone,” the president said of the Tuskegee experiment, which began in 1932 and was not shut down until a public outcry 40 years later, “but we can end the silence.”

The president’s voice choked up when he described the elderly survivors of the experiment--typically laborers and sharecroppers--as symbols of the racial healing that he said he wants for the nation.

“We can stop turning our heads away. We can look at you in the eyes and finally say on behalf of the American people: What the government did was shameful and I am sorry,” he told the elderly men, emphasizing the last three words.

“Your presence here shows us that you have chosen a better path than your government did so long ago,” the president said. “You have not withheld the power to forgive.”

The formal U.S. apology was the most recent step in a saga that began when the U.S. Public Health Service recruited 399 black men in rural Alabama for a study of the effects of syphilis, which can lead to paralysis and blindness. The men did not know that they had been picked for the study because they already harbored the disease. They were told only that they had “bad blood.”

The notorious experiment has since become a painful symbol for many African Americans who retain deep suspicions of medical research and the government’s motivation in scientific experiments involving blacks.

Indeed, the anguish remained much on the minds of the survivors who accepted Clinton’s invitation to the White House on Friday, even as they also expressed gratitude for the apology. Herman Shaw, a retired textile worker who sometimes speaks for his fellow survivors, said: “It is never too late to work to restore faith and trust. . . . President Clinton’s decision to gather us here to allow us to finally put this horrible nightmare behind us as a nation is a most welcome decision.” But it was clear that the experience remains searing for Shaw, who turns 95 Sunday. “We were treated unfairly, to some extent like guinea pigs. We were not paid. We were not dancing boys, as we were depicted in [the television movie] ‘Ms. Evers’ Boys.’ We were all hard-working men, and not boys, and citizens of the United States.”

Friday’s apology was one of a series of presidential events designed to elevate the issue of racial and ethnic relations, which Clinton views as a top priority for his second term. Clinton recently appeared at a Mets-Dodgers baseball game in New York that honored the late Jackie Robinson for breaking the “color barrier” in baseball. And he plans a major speech on race and diversity at UC San Diego next month.

Other survivors and their families, unable to make the trip, watched via satellite from the campus of Tuskegee University, which, despite popular impressions, did not take part in the experiment.

The Tuskegee experiment, ended 25 years ago, has continued to echo in various ways. By the time it was exposed, 28 men had died of syphilis, 100 others were dead of related complications, at least 40 wives had been infected and 19 children had contracted the disease at birth.

But even now the episode retains a negative legacy. Blacks, for example, are more wary than whites of donating organs or participating in experimental cancer regimens. Memories of the study also reinforce views within the black community that the government has used the HIV virus and needle exchange programs in a campaign of racial genocide.

Clinton on Friday sought to address some of the lingering concerns and issues with a modest new initiative to encourage more minorities to enter the field of bioethics.

He pledged a $200,000 planning grant to allow Tuskegee University to pursue building a Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care. The White House said that the center would serve as a “lasting memorial” that would “address the legacy” of the study.

Clinton also announced the creation of bioethics fellowships for minority students, offered by the Department of Health and Human Services. And he directed HHS Secretary Donna Shalala to draft a report that would focus on ways that the government can more effectively involve minorities in research and health care.