BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY : AFRICAN AMERICAN " CHARLIE POLLARD " WAS ONE OF THE TUSKEGEE EXPERIMENT : GOES INTO THE " HALL OF BLACK HEROES "

                          BLACK     SOCIAL    HISTORY                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

People of the Tuskegee Experiment

Return>Tuskegee Experiment Charlie Pollard Charlie Pollard was born in 1906, and died in 2000. He was a test subject in the Tuskegee Experiment throughout all 40 years of the study. He felt that his treatment during the study was a violation of his civil rights. This lead to his suing the government in a lawsuit called Pollard v. United States. Eventually, the United States government settled the lawsuit in 1992 by creating a fund to compensate surviving test subjects and their families. It also ensured that study survivors had access to decent health care. Dr. Clark        Dr. Taliaferro Clark's initial goal of the project was to follow untreated syphilis in black men for six to eight months, with treatment afterwards. He agreed with the deceptive methods suggested by Dr. Vonderlehr, and didn't like how expensive the treatment phase of the study was going to be. He called the spinal taps they gave the patients "treatment," and looked down upon the African Americans. He said "These negroes are very ignorant and easily influenced by things that would be of minor significance in a more intelligent group," when referring to them. Dr. Vonderlehr Dr. Raymond H. Vonderlehr replaced Dr. Clark, when he retired after the first year. Dr. Vonderlehr asked the patients for their permission to give them spinal taps by calling them "special free treatment." He retired from his position in 1943, 11 years after the study began. Vonderlehr was replaced by Dr. John R. Heller. When the public learned about the study in 1972, he defended the ethical implications of the study, and also refused to acknowledge similarities between the study and the human experiments performed by the Nazis. (Michigan)