Respect, Healing, and Bioethics

In honor of Black History Month, Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics and the Tuskegee University National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care partnered for a third year on a series of events. Each event is posted on the HMS Center for Bioethics YouTube page.

Event Details and Speakers

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

Evelynn M. Hammonds, BEE, SM, PhD, Scott Harris Podolsky, MD, Philip J. Deloria, Dominic W. Hall, MA, ALM, Jane Pickering, MA, MS, and Robert D. Truog, MD, MA
February 9 6 p.m. ET

Watch the video recording on our YouTube channel.

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, led a seminar discussion among several of the committee members about the committee, its deliberations, and its conclusions.

This seminar was 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

Carmen J. Thornton, MPH, MCHES, Susan M. Reverby, PhD, Jesse Milan, Jr., JD, Wangui Muigai, PhD, Lachlan Forrow, MD, and David Augustin Hodge, Sr., DMin, PhD
February 17 12:30 p.m. ET

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?

Introductory Remarks:
  • Carmen J. Thornton, MPH, MCHES
    Director of Research, Development, and Workforce, American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
    Consultant, Voices for Our Fathers Legacy Foundation
    Granddaughter of Fred Tyson, subject in USPHS Syphilis Study at Tuskegee
Presenters:
  • Susan M. Reverby, PhD
    Marion Butler McLean Professor Emerita in the History of Ideas
    Professor Emerita of Women's and Gender Studies, Wellesley College
    Author of Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy
  • Jesse Milan, Jr., JD
    President and CEO, AIDS United
  • Wangui Muigai, PhD
    Assistant Professor, Brandeis University
    Greenwall Faculty Scholar, class of 2025
Moderator:
  • Lachlan Forrow, MD
    Director, Ethics & Palliative Care Program, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
    Lecturer on Global Health and Social Medicine, Part-time, Harvard Medical School
    President, The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship
Commentator:

Support provided by the Oswald DeN. Cammann Fund at Harvard University.