Black History Month Event Series

Co-Sponsored by the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics, the Harvard Medical School Office for Diversity, Inclusion, and Community Partnership, and the National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care at Tuskegee University

In honor of Black History Month, Harvard Medical School and Tuskegee University have partnered on a series of events examining the history of racism in health care, its impact on Black individuals and the Black community, and gathering solutions for a healthier future from experts and thought leaders in history, health policy and law, social justice, and public health and medicine. The events are held in February and the recordings are uploaded to the Center's YouTube channel.

Upcoming Events

Respecting the Remains of Those Who Were Enslaved: Reflections on the Report of the Harvard Steering Committee on Human Remains in University Museum Collections

February 9, 2023 | 6 - 7:30 p.m. ET | Live on Zoom | Register Here

Last fall, the Harvard Steering Committee on Human Remains in University Museum Collections issued a report regarding the procurement, provenance, preservation, and disposition of human remains in Harvard museums and collections, including those of at least 19 individuals who were or who may have been enslaved.

In celebration of Black History Month, Professor Evelynn Hammonds, the committee chair, will lead a seminar discussion among several of the committee members about the committee, its deliberations, and its conclusions.

This seminar is hosted by the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics, the Harvard Medical School Office for Diversity, Inclusion, and Community Partnership, and the National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care at Tuskegee University.

Committee Chair:
  • Evelynn M. Hammonds, BEE, SM, PhD
    Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz Professor of the History of Science
    Professor of African & African American Studies, and Professor in the Department of Social & Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Committee Members:
  • Scott Harris Podolsky, MD
    Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine
    Director, Center for the History of Medicine, Countway Medical Library
    Primary Care Physician, Massachusetts General Hospital
  • Philip J. Deloria
    Leverett Saltonstall Professor of History, Harvard University
  • Dominic W. Hall, MA, ALM
    Curator, Warren Anatomical Museum
  • Jane Pickering, MA, MS
    William & Muriel Seabury Howells Director, Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology
Moderator:
  • Robert D. Truog, MD, MA
    Director, Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics
    Frances Glessner Lee Professor of Legal Medicine
    Professor of Anaesthesia (Pediatrics), Harvard Medical School

Research Ethics Consortium: Tuskegee Healing, the Moral Determinants of Health, and the Ethics of Research on Black Health

February 17, 2023 | 12:30 - 2 p.m. ET | Live on Zoom | Register Here

The USPHS Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male at Tuskegee and Macon County began in 1932, after US Public Health Service doctors recorded a 39.8% prevalence of syphilis among patients seen in Macon County, Alabama during a treatment study in one corner of the county. While these data might have raised many possible research questions, USPHS doctors chose to focus on the natural history of untreated syphilis.

They not only denied participants the treatments available in the 1930’s; they also chose to continue to study untreated syphilis long after highly-effective, inexpensive, and extraordinarily safe treatment with penicillin became widely available. While the research methods they used are now universally condemned, far less attention has been given to more fundamental questions about the ethics of research, including:

What should the goals of research even be? Who should decide those? What are the most crucial ethical characteristics of relationships between investigators and research subjects?

  • Lachlan Forrow, MD
    Director, Ethics & Palliative Care Program, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
    Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
    President, The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship