[Hamp-law] Tuskegee: an American Atrocity

[Flavio Risech]

PANEL DISCUSSION Thursday, February 19, at 8 pm in the Film/Photo Gallery,

in conjunction with the EXHIBITION "The Greater Good: An Artist's 
Contemporary View of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment" by Tony Hooker.

PANELISTS will be:

Tony Hooker (the artist)

Amy Jordan (African-American History, Hampshire)

Alan Goodman (Biological Anthropology)

Kimothy Jones (Director, The Physician Diversity Project)



We look forward to a wide-ranging discussion, and hope you can join us.



BACKGROUND on the exhibition:

>From 1932-1972, the United States Public Health Service conducted a 
>study of syphilis in African-American men in rural Macon County, 
>Alabama. Promising medical treatment, hot meals and a "decent and 
>free burial", the Tuskegee Syphilis Study in fact left 412 
>syphilitic men untreated and uninformed as to their diagnosis. 28 of 
>them died of the disease and the others experienced considerable 
>unnecessary suffering. Exposed in 1972, this study has become a 
>landmark shameful episode in the history of medical research. In 
>1997, President Clinton issued an official government apology to the 
>African-American community.

Artist Tony Hooker has combined historic photographs made during the 
study with his own contemporary images. The exhibition includes over 
30 large-scale photographs, presented together with quotes from 
people involved in the experiment.  It powerfully evokes the 
specifics of this notorious episode in our history, raising questions 
about the impact of the study on the present and future.