We’ve had a lot of crappy apologies on the site lately. Here’s an apology that’s very, very good…which is itself good because what it’s apologizing for is utterly horrific.

You probably know about the Tuskegee Experiment. In 1932, 600 Black men from rural Alabama, in response to an offer for “free health care,” were enrolled without consent in a secret study by the U.S. Public Health Service to determine the effects of untreated syphilis.

“Bad blood.” Right.

There were 399 men with syphilis and 201 — the control group — without. Many were sons and grandsons of slaves; most had never seen a doctor. The experiment lasted 40 years; even after penicillin became the treatment of choice for syphilis in the 1940s, the men remained untreated. (They were told they suffered from “bad blood.”) A hundred died; 40 wives and 19 children were infected. According to University of Maryland professors of public health Stephen B. Thomas and Sandra Crouse Quinn:

Even as some men went blind and insane from advanced (tertiary) syphilis, the government doctors withheld treatment, remaining committed to observing their subjects through to the study’s predetermined “end point”—autopsy. To ensure that the families would agree to this final procedure, the government offered them burial insurance—at most, $50—to cover the cost of a casket and grave.

In 1965, a young San Francisco epidemiologist named Peter Buxtun learned of the Tuskegee Experiment from coworkers in the Public Health Service. He filed an official protest, trying to stop the study on ethical grounds, but it was rejected. He filed another protest in 1968; it too was rejected. The rationale: The experiment was not yet complete…meaning that some of the men were still alive. Buxton became a whistleblower, leaking information on Tuskegee to journalist Jean Heller; her story appeared in 1972 on the front page of the New York Times. After the resulting uproar, the experiment was halted. A civil rights attorney filed a  $1.8-billion lawsuit on the men’s behalf, winning only a $10-million out-of-court settlement. Today, Professor Thomas says, the effects of Tuskegee have left “a legacy of mistrust [among African-Americans] that hampers efforts to promote health and prevent disease.”

It wasn’t until 1997 that the U.S. Government apologized. President Bill Clinton addressed five of the eight survivors of the experiments (all of whom have since passed away) who traveled to the White House (one of whom took his first airplane trip to get there, at the age of 100), along with Tuskegee family members, the current Surgeon General and the Congressional Black Caucus, to hear his apology on behalf of the United States.

Washington Post photo of survivor Herman Shaw and Bill Clinton, by Susan Biddle

Clinton said, “It is not only in remembering that shameful past that we can make amends and repair our nation, but it is in remembering that past that we can build a better present and a better future. And without remembering it, we cannot make amends and we cannot go forward.” Clinton said the Tuskegee men were betrayed and lied to. Their rights were trampled upon. His words are worth quoting at length:

The United States government did something that was wrong — deeply, profoundly, morally wrong. It was an outrage to our commitment to integrity and equality for all our citizens.

To the survivors, to the wives and family members, the children and the grandchildren, I say what you know: No power on Earth can give you back the lives lost, the pain suffered, the years of internal torment and anguish. What was done cannot be undone. But we can end the silence. We can stop turning our heads away. We can look at you in the eye and finally say on behalf of the American people, what the United States government did was shameful, and I am sorry.

The American people are sorry — for the loss, for the years of hurt. You did nothing wrong, but you were grievously wronged. I apologize and I am sorry that this apology has been so long in coming.

To Macon County, to Tuskegee, to the doctors who have been wrongly associated with the events there, you have our apology, as well. To our African American citizens, I am sorry that your federal government orchestrated a study so clearly racist. That can never be allowed to happen again. It is against everything our country stands for and what we must stand against is what it was.

So let us resolve to hold forever in our hearts and minds the memory of a time not long ago in Macon County, Alabama, so that we can always see how adrift we can become when the rights of any citizens are neglected, ignored and betrayed. And let us resolve here and now to move forward together.

Ordinarily, we at SorryWatch are wary of the phrase “move forward.” It often means “skim right over” or “hustle along as quickly as possible, nope, nothing to see here.” It often means “forget.”

But that’s not what Clinton was saying. We do need to move forward so that African-Americans, who still lag far behind whites in access to and quality of health care, can reach equality. Clinton’s apology took ownership of the sin, didn’t shy away from acknowledging its horrific effects, used non-weaselly words (racist, betrayed, outraged, shameful, grievously wronged, trampled upon). He also backed up his words with deeds. He pledged funds to create a memorial, build the Center for Bioethics in Research at Tuskegee University, and establish a Department of Health and Human Services bioethics fellowship for minority medical students. He also extended the charter of the National Bioethics Advisory Committee to make sure such ethics lapses don’t occur again. 

Finally, here’s a video made by Ms Dionne Curbeam’s middle-school students in Baltimore.

No apology could undo this. But a strong presidential apology can have a role in making amends.