Moral Obligation

Most medical authorities agree that it is 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 the Federal Government by lawyers rep resenting both those who had survived and the families of those who had died during the study or have died since.

Last week the Government acknowledged its moral obligation to those it had failed to treat. A federal judge in Montgomery approved a settlement that will benefit each unwitting participant in the ill-conceived study. Those who had syphilis and survived will receive $37,500 each. Two hundred others who were included in the study as controls but did not have the disease will get $15,000 if they are still alive; otherwise their estates will receive $5,000. Nor will the men who died of the complications of syphilis or of other causes during the course of the study or since then be com pletely forgotten. Under the terms of the settlement, their estates will get $15,000.

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