David Feldshuh, physician, Cornell professor and artistic director of the Cornell Center for Theatre Arts, was honored recently at a celebration of the opening of the National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care at Tuskegee University in Tuskegee, Alabama. The celebration also marked the anniversary of President Clinton's 1997 apology to the survivors of the U.S. Public Health Service Tuskegee Syphilis Study.
The study, conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service over the course of 40 years, tracked 400 African American men in Macon, Ala., in order to study the effects of untreated syphilis. The men were never told they had the disease nor were they informed of treatment options-even after penicillin had been proven a cure.
Feldshuh helped raise awareness of this health conspiracy with his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, "Miss Evers' Boys," based on the study and its aftermath, and his educational video, "Susceptible to Kindness," in which he interviewed observers as well as survivors of the syphilis study.
During the weekend ceremony, Feldshuh was awarded a plaque honoring him for his distinguished service to the field of public health in transforming the negative legacy of the United States Public Health Service Syphilis Study and for being a "man of courage, noble spirits, humanitarian principles, and unselfish devotion to the common good and welfare of our nation."
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