CAPSULES: 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...

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