By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN, M.D.
The New York Times
Published: April 1, 2013
Medicine honors its heroes in many ways. But sometimes high accolades can turn out to be highly embarrassing.
Consider the annual award for lifetime achievement in preventing and controlling sexual infections, given since 1972 by the American Sexually Transmitted Diseases Association. The prize is named for an authentic giant of medicine: Dr. Thomas Parran Jr., the nation’s sixth surgeon general (from 1936 to 1948), who used what was then a supremely powerful position to lift American public health to the front ranks.
At a time when “venereal diseases” were spoken of in whispers, Dr. Parran influenced Congress to finance rapid-treatment centers to control and prevent syphilis, gonorrhea and chancroid.
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The debate over the Parran Award throws a spotlight on the issue of changing standards in medicine. What are scientists to do when they name their most prestigious award for an icon linked years later to unethical research?
The two medical scandals revolved around experiments that are now universally regarded as shocking. Dr. Parran did not perform either study. Though national experts approved them both, he presided over them, strongly supported them and followed their progress in medical journals.
One, the Tuskegee study, observed the course of untreated syphilis among hundreds of men who were infected naturally in Alabama. The study began in 1932, and it was not halted by the United States Public Health Service until 1972, after a whistle-blower complained that infected patients in the study were not given penicillin, the standard therapy after World War II. Some participants died of the disease, some of their sexual partners contracted it, and some children were born infected.
The entire story is here.
