Excerpt taken from CNN Interactive

Clinton to apologize to men in Tuskegee study

May 2, 1997
Web posted at: 6:19 p.m. EDT (2219 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Clinton will extend an official apology later this month to eight Alabama men who were among hundreds of blacks denied treatment for syphilis as part of a government study.

The president will issue formal apologies May 16 to the living participants in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study during a ceremony in the Rose Garden, presidential spokesman Mike McCurry said Thursday.

It is not clear whether the men will be with him to receive it. All are frail. Their ages range from 87 to 109.

In the study, the Public Health Service withheld treatment from 399 black men between 1932 and 1972 to study how syphilis spread and how it killed. By the time the study became public in 1972, 28 men had died of syphilis, about 100 had died of syphilis-related complications, 40 wives had been infected and 19 children contracted the disease at birth.

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