Distrust may lead blacks to be wary of AIDS vaccine testing.

2003 MAR 19 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Researchers trying to learn more about why an AIDS vaccine appeared to work well in a small number of black volunteers may have trouble finding people for further studies, advocates and educators warn.

Suspicion of medical research runs deep among many blacks, they say, and the reason can be summarized in one word: Tuskegee.

In the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, conducted by the federal government between 1932 and 1972, researchers withheld medical treatment from poor, black men in Macon County, Alabama, for experimental purposes. The men were not told they had syphilis, and weren't treated for the disease even after penicillin became available. By the time the study was exposed, 128 men had died of syphilis or related complications.

More than 30 years later, the damage done by that study still lingers, black activists say - even hindering efforts to halt the AIDS epidemic.

"Many African Americans are suspicious of the health care system and suspicious of doctors and scientists because there's a legacy of mistreatment," said Phill Wilson, executive director of the Los Angeles-based Black AIDS Institute.

"Even though people may or may not know the specifics of the Tuskegee trials, they know that there are health disparities and that blacks often get inferior treatment based on race."

J. Lawrence Miller, executive director of the Black Educational AIDS Project in Baltimore calls it the "Tuskegee mentality."