So many of the doctors we have interviewed here on SurvivorNet have talked about the importance of clinical trials in finding new treatments for various cancers. But for many African-Americans, the concept of clinical trials is tainted. That’s because of a collective mistrust that lingers from the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, otherwise known as the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male” a study that ran from 1932 and only ended 40 years later. More than 600 African-American men in Alabama were enrolled in the study by the U.S. Health Service, but the men were never told what the study was truly about and they were never given the proper treatment to cure the disease. In 1997, President Bill Clinton apologized on behalf of the nation.
But that apology has not wiped out the legacy of the past. Dr Kathie-Ann Joseph, Co-Director of the Welters Breast Health Outreach & Navigation Program at NYU Perlmutter Cancer Center, says the work continues in an effort to rebuild trust among some minitority communities. “Having navigators that look like them, speak the language, whether we have a large Hispanic population, Asian population, African American population, that helps a lot … Because we really do strongly believe that clinical trials can offer the best care for patients.”
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