Exploring the “Legacy” of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study: A Follow-up Study From the Tuskegee Legacy Project

The purpose of this follow-up 2003 3-City Tuskegee Legacy Project (TLP) Study was to validate or refute our prior findings from the 1999-2000 4 City TLP Study, which found no evidence to support the widely acknowledged “legacy” of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study (TSS), ie, that blacks are reluctant to participate in biomedical studies due to their knowledge of the TSS. The TLP Questionnaire was administered in this random-digit-dial telephone survey to a stratified random sample of 1162 black, white, and Puerto Rican Hispanic adults in 3 different US cities. The findings from this current 3-City TLP Study fail to support the widely acknowledged “legacy” of the TSS, as awareness of the TSS was not statistically associated with the willingness to participate in biomedical studies. These findings, being in complete agreement with our previous findings from our 1999-2000 4-City TLP, validate those prior findings.